She was trying to stay calm I think. To slip past them... That's what she had been trained for... But in the deadness and the silence... in that black tension, now we would see what would come of the training. She was hiding in the thick evergreens. The trees had begun to clear as she had made her way out of the deeper woods... I felt the fear with her. I sensed instinctively she was being followed.
The moonlight was weak. The clouds above, skeletal and fickle. I had no idea how long she had been running, but she wasn't breathing very hard. I caught a little glimpse at her, pale and thin in the blue light from the sky. She had a decidedly angular face. A thin nose that turned up ever so little at the end... and her eyes were a kind of black that ate in all the light around them.
Black hair hung to her shoulders and she was dressed for running and hiding.
Then before I knew what to think about it... they were around her. The smallest of rustlings back towards the woods and my glance darted towards it with her. Then two of them shot across the clearing towards her.
Dogs... no wolves. They bolted forward. Quick and silent like fish. The woman made no sound herself but dashed from her hiding place and began running. I followed them... Trying to hide myself... I was terrified of the wolves. I had to help this girl though. I ran after the group.
We ran for some minutes... the trees got more and more sparse... And then I stopped quickly, noticing that they had as well. Because there was no longer any land to run on. We had come to the edge of a cliff.
The woman was being yanked around by the two hounds. It was no where as clear an image as I would have liked. The shapes became vague in the half light. They were as big as I was and bent with all sorta of blood lust on killing this girl. I looked on horrified... I looked around for some way to help her. A stick. A stone. Something. But I was forced to look back as I heard a scream. From her. This girl. She had pulled out a little short knife from a boot and stuck one of the dogs in the neck. And kicked the other off of her. But there were more of them... I felt the breath of one of them on the back of my neck and yelled out as it brushed past me into the clearing towards the girl. It didn't hear me. It didn't stop. It made no sign it had noticed me at all. Now it was five of them darting her way. Swift and silent as shadows across the white sand of the clearing. This time I ran out with them. There were too many. She couldn't get them all.
As I looked on though she had kicked the first two approaching in the face. Kicked them down flat. They struggled to get up. But then as if frightened... the others began to back away from her.
They whimpered and growled and backed away back towards the woods.
I stopped running towards them... and watched the cowering back, wondering at this odd and fortunate chain of events. The growled low... and sat down on their haunches menacing. The stricken ones staggered to their feet and joined the others in a wide circle around the girl... Who... oddly was smiling.
Ha ha ha! She laughed a laugh that sounded as careless as a teenagers. "I saw you running with them... Always sending out the boys after me... How many of them have I killed?'
Her smile was galvanized by the blue black moonlight.
I couldn't see who she was talking to until a moment later. A small thin man... barely as tall as me and much thinner stepped out of the shadow of the woods. He could have been a child for all that I knew... but he was dressed so perfectly as to be unrealistic of his jaunt through the woods just now. A tiny black suit. White french cuffs and a stiff white collar.
"Well this time you took it... Congratulations..." The man said. His voice was cracked and deep and completely disturbing for such a small child like person. "We'll have it back now though, thankyou."
He said this with absolutely no emotion. No inflection. And his voice sounded so familiar. Like someones that I had always known.
The woman did not respond to this except to spit on the ground in contempt. "Ill do what I came here for she said... and with that she flung her little boot knife at the boy... flink. As it nearly struck him in the face he flicked it to the ground....
The wolves grew vocal and angry at this... As if it were an affront to the entirety of their religion and made for the girl once again... And this time they were not alone. The little man rushed the distance between him and the cliff and quickly caught the girls neck making it there before the dogs. Jumping up on her knees to make the distance and then pulling her down with him to accommodate his shortness at the ground.
"What now girl?" Impish boy called to her sweetly as he was crushing her neck... "Give me back what's mine? Ill let you go?" The intensity with which the boy was crushing her neck was devastating to watch... The once gloating smile and taunting look dropped from her face leaving a blank white knowledge in her eye. She had chanced too much. She hadn't run fast enough.
Then there was something else. Something foreign that I'd never seen a human express.
A fastness. A calmness.
A quick snatch and now she had him by his throat as well... She pounced and pushed him onto his back using her height as an advantage. The wolves stood around taught as a drawn bow, but would not apparently challenge the contestants...
"And what of your family? You sister? What of them?" The little man asked his face rigid with the struggle...
The girl pulled out of his grasp and looked down on his as struggled wildly. "I know where they've gone."
"Then you must arrange to see them again! You must arrange freedom for them!" The little squealed at her.
The girl smiled at this, to my surprise, and said..." I'd much rather you visit them for me."
Little man snapped his finger and the wolves shot forward. Just then, though, my mouth fell open as slick black wings opened from the girls back and beat down once and quickly, just diving over the heads of the charging dogs, and over to her little knife in the sand...
She quickly pulled little man by the hair of his head and beat those wings three or so times more to hover over the dogs who were below her now yapping and whining for the leader to be returned.
"Remember this!" She screamed at the dogs. "Remember how there was nothing you could do!" Remember ... remember when you begin to feel safe again!" She laughed a little... I couldn't tell who was evil any more... I couldn't tell who I should help.
She fingered the tiny knife in her right hand and then quickly pulled it across little mans throat...
He en-hailed with a slight chug as she dropped him to the ground and made the smallest of thuds in the dusty sand.
The wolves looked up angrily and she flew off.
I bolted up sweating as my alarm rolled pleated out its tell tale fog horn sound.
Blink. Blink.
"DAMMIT!" Churned through my head like a track on a CD skipping as I jumped down from my top bunk to look for clothing and shoes. It can not be 7:50... It just can NOT BE! Kakis. Check. Ok. Teeth... NO! no. You have 10 minutes! It takes you 6 to make it across from your room! Shirt. Books. .... Tie.
Grrraaaaah! I was mad as hell. How could I have hit snooze that many times! I was stepping out of the room as I noticed and odd sensation... "The carpet is very short here... i thought." Gah! Shoes... I slipped some on and snatched at a very large, very ugly scarf on my way out the door.
:slam!: I passed boys in various stages of un-dress through the hall as I dashed madly for the side door of the dormatory.
"Hi josh!" My hall leader called out brightly. He'd obviously been slowly sipping Turkish coffee for hours.
"GrumN pEeh. Rah." I said as I zipped past him. Tucking my shirt in in the mean time.
I skipped down the stairs to the first floor exit two at a time glancing at my MOTOrazor the whole While. 7:54.
"OK. Alright Mr. Medlin. You're gonne be just fine.... just fine!" I heard in my head.
I shot out of the building forgetting all social graces and a bumped past two senior 'handsome soccer players.'
"Sorry! Sorry!" I offered as they shot me looks of disgust.
"Late... I'm Sorry!"
And then as the fates must have decided. There was Amanda. Even now as I type the name, it brings an utter revolt. So much so that I was required to look away from my typing and stare at a dark corner of the room.
Amanda Huss. Be mindful reader, it was not so then. 'Then' it hardly made a difference when I saw her. But.... the time would come... let it be known.
She wandered past with a group of acads.
"Josh!" She called out from the fray of them.... "Josh! Hi!"
I turned and greeted her happily.
"Hey Manda! Hey nice to see you." I said... Walking backwards away from her towards my classroom.
"Hey... you commin to church tonight?" She asked smiling at me all red haired and jolly.
"Yeah!... yeah... Ill see ya. I've gotta run. Late for Doctrines..." I turned and jogged towards lecture B.
I made it at the sound of the bell. The kids in the seats next to me all seemed rather perturbed at the size of my book bag; but it couldnt be helped. I didn't have time to stroll back to my room to change and fraternize with my friends on the hall between classes. I would be going till 1PM. And then work. So I squeezed in between peoples twice my size. I must have looked like a pack mule.
"Alright students" said the withered old man at the head of gray room.. "Would you please all take out a pencil and some notebook paper... and write for me todays quiz. Word perfect... John 4:24. You will have ten minutes to complete this....
Ok. Ok. I don't have to worry about this... but I did. Amongst all the things that Id gathered from my room on the way out, none of them were either pencil, nor paper. I whispered and annoyingly borrowed them from other students in my row... and began to write.
"John 4:24"
"God is spirit, and they that worship him should worship him in spirit and in truth."
I signed my name, and passed my paper to the end of the row for grading and then promptly fell asleep. I wandered if I could find out where that girl had flown off to... I wondered if I should follow her.
Showing posts with label College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label College. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
quixotic
My blood pressure had been spiking for most of the late afternoon. Cause I knew it was time. I knew I had to make a move, or no one was going to.
I was scared though. It would either work or it wouldn't. And to tell you flatly reader... I'd never been kissed.
I'd known 'X' for about three months... Christine was way...way over by then. And Melodie.... I don't think Im gonna get into that right this second. X and I had been playing a delicate little game of 'hint and lie' for something that was starting to seem like the better part of a decade. X is a bit of a wall flower. X had drawn me in with a surprising complexity and the promise of something I'd never felt before. Connection.
Not like 'networking' or 'friendship' or... anything quite so trite as those things. It felt like that rush you feel when you're on the highway and you're dead sure you're gonna tail end somebody because they stopped and you didn't notice. It felt like what a shark feels when there's blood in the water. It felt like enough static to raise every hair on your head and then make all the little blond hairs on your arms stand and point.
We were driving around in the car and it was turning dusk. We were talking about things that didn't matter. And i was rummaging for every hook I could think of to turn the conversation in the direction I wanted with out being blunt and plain and..... childish. I kept rubbing my hands on my khakis... cause my palms were sweating. I felt like I was being hunted. But that was irrational. Of course I wasn't.
"Nothing has to happen at all!" I kept reminding myself. A little mantra I was chanting in my head. "Everythings going to be fine.... you'll see." Maybe that little voice wasn't mine. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe it was worse. Maybe it was lust. Either way it calmed me down and set me just like steel to my purpose.
I don't know how I had let all this come to have such intense meaning. This wasn't skydiving. But just at that second... I would have been less nervous about jumping out of a plane.
I was trying... but you know, honestly there was no way to flip the conversation from "but of course, that was before Bach's wife died...." to... "I want to stick my tongue down your throat."
I took the best route that I knew. I let the conversation die off for a minute.
ME: "So.... I have a confession."
X:.......
ME: " I kinda.... uh. wanna.... kiss you."
X: (laughs nervously)
ME: "I mean.... you know.... just.... if that's ok with you and all..." I had never felt this exact mix of emotions before. It was like tight rope walking 50 ft over a snake pit. Each contraction of my heart was clearly audible.
X: "Um....."
ME: "I mean.... if you don't want to.... " (Stupid! Just stop talking!) I thought.
X: "OK." "Sure."
Well. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better. At least X wasn't opposed to the idea.
X knew an out of the way place. Up a winding road. Up and up the side of Paris mountain. The charcoal silhouettes of live oaks and maples twisted and arched their backs across the sky. They laughed at us and fought back some of the starlight. They must have snickered about how absurd humans must be.
We weren't really talking.
ME: "Where are we going?"
X: "You'll see. I know a place."
Oh X.... you charmer you.
We parked along side the tiny off road leaving just enough space for passing traffic to squeeze around. It didn't matter. There weren't any cars that far up the mountain. Not tonight. Mercifully.
We stumbled like children down the embankment. Tiny souls blind to the bitter broken change. Blind to the way they would soon be broken together. Down the hill they stumbled through the dead hill grasses that came up to their knees all white and gray in the light of the moon and stars.
It was a little flat space. Maybe at one time someone had intended to build a house there, on the side of the mountain. Maybe they had gone bankrupt. Now it was a dump site for extra cement and building materials no longer needed. If you looked carefully the clearing was dotted with crush beer cans... Evidence of low living and bad decision making. I didn't notice though... I was staring out over the edge of the cliff. All of Greenville was stretched out in front of me. I could see for miles and miles and the landscape mirrored the cold diamond sky, with it's tiny lights from all the houses and street bulbs.
Reader... come with me. Follow me to the most beautiful place on earth. X and I were both shaking by now. Inching closer in the grassy desolation. Laughing nervously.
As the breeze swilled around that blue lit perch on the mountain... we kissed. My blood turned to liquid fire as dark methamphetamine scorched its way into my heart.
I laughed...
Me: "That wasn't so bad was it?"
X: (still shaking) "No. No it wasn't."
The deed was done. And we like successful thieves laughed our way back down the sober mountain. I won't ever forget that place or those moments. Come death or starvation. Come the spite of the rest of humanity. I'm sorry it didn't last X. I'm sorry it wasn't forever. I'm sorry that some things that should never have been forgotten... were lost.
I was a changed man after though. I no longer had the fear of god in me. I would trick hell and swim the river Stix if i must. This was what I was born to be. This was the closest I had ever been to perfect.
I was scared though. It would either work or it wouldn't. And to tell you flatly reader... I'd never been kissed.
I'd known 'X' for about three months... Christine was way...way over by then. And Melodie.... I don't think Im gonna get into that right this second. X and I had been playing a delicate little game of 'hint and lie' for something that was starting to seem like the better part of a decade. X is a bit of a wall flower. X had drawn me in with a surprising complexity and the promise of something I'd never felt before. Connection.
Not like 'networking' or 'friendship' or... anything quite so trite as those things. It felt like that rush you feel when you're on the highway and you're dead sure you're gonna tail end somebody because they stopped and you didn't notice. It felt like what a shark feels when there's blood in the water. It felt like enough static to raise every hair on your head and then make all the little blond hairs on your arms stand and point.
We were driving around in the car and it was turning dusk. We were talking about things that didn't matter. And i was rummaging for every hook I could think of to turn the conversation in the direction I wanted with out being blunt and plain and..... childish. I kept rubbing my hands on my khakis... cause my palms were sweating. I felt like I was being hunted. But that was irrational. Of course I wasn't.
"Nothing has to happen at all!" I kept reminding myself. A little mantra I was chanting in my head. "Everythings going to be fine.... you'll see." Maybe that little voice wasn't mine. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe it was worse. Maybe it was lust. Either way it calmed me down and set me just like steel to my purpose.
I don't know how I had let all this come to have such intense meaning. This wasn't skydiving. But just at that second... I would have been less nervous about jumping out of a plane.
I was trying... but you know, honestly there was no way to flip the conversation from "but of course, that was before Bach's wife died...." to... "I want to stick my tongue down your throat."
I took the best route that I knew. I let the conversation die off for a minute.
ME: "So.... I have a confession."
X:.......
ME: " I kinda.... uh. wanna.... kiss you."
X: (laughs nervously)
ME: "I mean.... you know.... just.... if that's ok with you and all..." I had never felt this exact mix of emotions before. It was like tight rope walking 50 ft over a snake pit. Each contraction of my heart was clearly audible.
X: "Um....."
ME: "I mean.... if you don't want to.... " (Stupid! Just stop talking!) I thought.
X: "OK." "Sure."
Well. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better. At least X wasn't opposed to the idea.
X knew an out of the way place. Up a winding road. Up and up the side of Paris mountain. The charcoal silhouettes of live oaks and maples twisted and arched their backs across the sky. They laughed at us and fought back some of the starlight. They must have snickered about how absurd humans must be.
We weren't really talking.
ME: "Where are we going?"
X: "You'll see. I know a place."
Oh X.... you charmer you.
We parked along side the tiny off road leaving just enough space for passing traffic to squeeze around. It didn't matter. There weren't any cars that far up the mountain. Not tonight. Mercifully.
We stumbled like children down the embankment. Tiny souls blind to the bitter broken change. Blind to the way they would soon be broken together. Down the hill they stumbled through the dead hill grasses that came up to their knees all white and gray in the light of the moon and stars.
It was a little flat space. Maybe at one time someone had intended to build a house there, on the side of the mountain. Maybe they had gone bankrupt. Now it was a dump site for extra cement and building materials no longer needed. If you looked carefully the clearing was dotted with crush beer cans... Evidence of low living and bad decision making. I didn't notice though... I was staring out over the edge of the cliff. All of Greenville was stretched out in front of me. I could see for miles and miles and the landscape mirrored the cold diamond sky, with it's tiny lights from all the houses and street bulbs.
Reader... come with me. Follow me to the most beautiful place on earth. X and I were both shaking by now. Inching closer in the grassy desolation. Laughing nervously.
As the breeze swilled around that blue lit perch on the mountain... we kissed. My blood turned to liquid fire as dark methamphetamine scorched its way into my heart.
I laughed...
Me: "That wasn't so bad was it?"
X: (still shaking) "No. No it wasn't."
The deed was done. And we like successful thieves laughed our way back down the sober mountain. I won't ever forget that place or those moments. Come death or starvation. Come the spite of the rest of humanity. I'm sorry it didn't last X. I'm sorry it wasn't forever. I'm sorry that some things that should never have been forgotten... were lost.
I was a changed man after though. I no longer had the fear of god in me. I would trick hell and swim the river Stix if i must. This was what I was born to be. This was the closest I had ever been to perfect.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Collusion: Part XXV
I hadn't planned on it happening that way. There's just no good way to do some things though.
Classes were over for the day. A day that had been heavy with the gray brooding weather that drifts across the state in the spring and fall. Rain that rolls down from the mountains and makes the rivers swell and makes everyone change their routes to and from classes. Christine and I had made dinner plans. Or I should say that she had briskly informed me that she didn't want anyone else coming with us to dinner.
"Ok,... that's fine. I only wanted to spend time with you... anyways." I had thought morosely, but didn't say anything.
Something was wrong I could tell. We wandered through the cavernous dinning common, and everyone else in the room seemed like extras on the set of a sitcom pilot that no network would ever pick up. I just got peas. I wasn't hungry and wanted to drag them around the plate while listening to Christine unload.
ME: "You seem really down today babe... What's going on?"
CD: "Oh, it's nothing.... It's just been a really.... really long week." She said, as if that was all she was really intending room. But we both knew better.
ME: "You know... I can tell somethings on your mind... you've been so so dark lately." The concerned look I was giving her was one I had seen I had seen on the faces of the doctors of ER. It was working like a dream.
CD: "Well... (it's at this point her blue eyes turned all slate and glassed over.) You know how I told you my dad was crazy?"
ME: "Yeah I remember us talking about it."
CD: "Well I don't think I ever said just how crazy.... I mean. Two years ago he converted to Judaism and tried to get my mom and I to stop eating ham. He went on these crazy pilgrimages to imaginary places. He barely spoke to me or mom." I could see it. I could see all the tiny little lacerations in her soul... and you know. I didnt have to look. She was just showing them to me on her own. "He's never told me that he loved me." She said staring me straight in the eye. Metalic.
ME: "Well... damn. Im... I hardly know what to say. You know you mean alot to me. You do. Maybe he's just got a very odd way of showing you that he cares about you?" I searched piteously for things to offer.
CD: "For the Feast of Tents.... he didn't have a ten... So he went out into the yard and lived in a cardboard box for a week."
ME: "See...." I said amused and smirking. "That's starting to sound like a personality disorder."
CD: "Yeah..." She replied. Her voice had turned to gravel and tears slid down her face. Now I felt like a complete shit head. No more smirks. Nothing funny. Lock it up.
For a few minutes nobody said anything. Mostly because i couldnt think of anything to follow up that beautiful little chasm that I had dinted the conversation with... and because whenever Christine is that up set... She just gives up talking. Her voice turns rusty. It's pitiful.
It was in those moments I saw through the layers of collegiate snip that she had developed. She wasn't snarky now. She wasn't dangerous. She was just a little girl. She couldn't be more than seven.
ME: "Babe, you know you're not going to have to put up with that forever... I mean why haven't you and your mom ever moved out?"
CD: "We did for a while.... "
ME: "That sounds like the way it should be always."
CD: "I know I talk about this stuff too much. I let it affect me too much. I let it affect you. Im sorry."
ME: "If it's something you wanna talk about, then we talk about it. It's no big deal.
CD: "I'm just.... so worried about my platform on Tuesday. I still have three pages to memorize. I have to go sign papers with financial aid. Oh and my dorm sup. wants to meet with me and talk about my 'christlike attitude.'"
ME: "Don't even worry about it." I offered with a slow smile. "Ill dress like you and go meet your dorm sup."
That got a little chuckle out of her. But didn't break the mood. I didn't have to think about it too long to come to the conclusion that I just couldn't support the both us. I'm a reasonable guy. But... this was no way to go about a romantic relationship.
It wasn't that I minded her crying in public and getting everyone else to think I had just said something wicked about the way she was dressed. I saw myself more as a care taker. Where's the challenge in that? I didn't say the right things at the right times. We could have a perfectly good date, and at the end of the night, she seemed.... melancholy. Just seemed like she was made out of porcelain, and it was my job to follow her around and pick up pieces that had broken off on her travels... and glue them back on the best I could.
One week later I broke up with her.
I walked her back to her room after another one of those sparkling dinner conversations. We were standing there on the corner in the lamp light.
ME: "I think we need to take some time off, you and me." I said flatly.
CD: "You........ do.........?" She said after a really long pause.
ME: "Yeah. I think it's a good idea."
CD: "So, that's it? walk me home and break up with me?" There was just black anger in her eyes. It sorta cut me.
ME: "Yeah... that's all I got."
I shrugged and without anything more, walked to my room in the dark.
Classes were over for the day. A day that had been heavy with the gray brooding weather that drifts across the state in the spring and fall. Rain that rolls down from the mountains and makes the rivers swell and makes everyone change their routes to and from classes. Christine and I had made dinner plans. Or I should say that she had briskly informed me that she didn't want anyone else coming with us to dinner.
"Ok,... that's fine. I only wanted to spend time with you... anyways." I had thought morosely, but didn't say anything.
Something was wrong I could tell. We wandered through the cavernous dinning common, and everyone else in the room seemed like extras on the set of a sitcom pilot that no network would ever pick up. I just got peas. I wasn't hungry and wanted to drag them around the plate while listening to Christine unload.
ME: "You seem really down today babe... What's going on?"
CD: "Oh, it's nothing.... It's just been a really.... really long week." She said, as if that was all she was really intending room. But we both knew better.
ME: "You know... I can tell somethings on your mind... you've been so so dark lately." The concerned look I was giving her was one I had seen I had seen on the faces of the doctors of ER. It was working like a dream.
CD: "Well... (it's at this point her blue eyes turned all slate and glassed over.) You know how I told you my dad was crazy?"
ME: "Yeah I remember us talking about it."
CD: "Well I don't think I ever said just how crazy.... I mean. Two years ago he converted to Judaism and tried to get my mom and I to stop eating ham. He went on these crazy pilgrimages to imaginary places. He barely spoke to me or mom." I could see it. I could see all the tiny little lacerations in her soul... and you know. I didnt have to look. She was just showing them to me on her own. "He's never told me that he loved me." She said staring me straight in the eye. Metalic.
ME: "Well... damn. Im... I hardly know what to say. You know you mean alot to me. You do. Maybe he's just got a very odd way of showing you that he cares about you?" I searched piteously for things to offer.
CD: "For the Feast of Tents.... he didn't have a ten... So he went out into the yard and lived in a cardboard box for a week."
ME: "See...." I said amused and smirking. "That's starting to sound like a personality disorder."
CD: "Yeah..." She replied. Her voice had turned to gravel and tears slid down her face. Now I felt like a complete shit head. No more smirks. Nothing funny. Lock it up.
For a few minutes nobody said anything. Mostly because i couldnt think of anything to follow up that beautiful little chasm that I had dinted the conversation with... and because whenever Christine is that up set... She just gives up talking. Her voice turns rusty. It's pitiful.
It was in those moments I saw through the layers of collegiate snip that she had developed. She wasn't snarky now. She wasn't dangerous. She was just a little girl. She couldn't be more than seven.
ME: "Babe, you know you're not going to have to put up with that forever... I mean why haven't you and your mom ever moved out?"
CD: "We did for a while.... "
ME: "That sounds like the way it should be always."
CD: "I know I talk about this stuff too much. I let it affect me too much. I let it affect you. Im sorry."
ME: "If it's something you wanna talk about, then we talk about it. It's no big deal.
CD: "I'm just.... so worried about my platform on Tuesday. I still have three pages to memorize. I have to go sign papers with financial aid. Oh and my dorm sup. wants to meet with me and talk about my 'christlike attitude.'"
ME: "Don't even worry about it." I offered with a slow smile. "Ill dress like you and go meet your dorm sup."
That got a little chuckle out of her. But didn't break the mood. I didn't have to think about it too long to come to the conclusion that I just couldn't support the both us. I'm a reasonable guy. But... this was no way to go about a romantic relationship.
It wasn't that I minded her crying in public and getting everyone else to think I had just said something wicked about the way she was dressed. I saw myself more as a care taker. Where's the challenge in that? I didn't say the right things at the right times. We could have a perfectly good date, and at the end of the night, she seemed.... melancholy. Just seemed like she was made out of porcelain, and it was my job to follow her around and pick up pieces that had broken off on her travels... and glue them back on the best I could.
One week later I broke up with her.
I walked her back to her room after another one of those sparkling dinner conversations. We were standing there on the corner in the lamp light.
ME: "I think we need to take some time off, you and me." I said flatly.
CD: "You........ do.........?" She said after a really long pause.
ME: "Yeah. I think it's a good idea."
CD: "So, that's it? walk me home and break up with me?" There was just black anger in her eyes. It sorta cut me.
ME: "Yeah... that's all I got."
I shrugged and without anything more, walked to my room in the dark.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Collusion: Part XXI
Christine and I had a conversation later that evening about just how little she liked the amount of time that I had been spending with Melodie Cappoccia. We were walking back towards her room after dinner. About as much practice that was going to be done that day, was already done, and I could tell she was in a bad mood.
CD:"I just don't understand why you like hanging out with her.... She's fat... and obnoxious and she smells like cherry blossom rape." She said flatly.
ME: "I mean.... It's not like I'm trying to make her into a best friend or anything... She just always seems to show up whenever I'm practicing."
CD: " Well.... why don't you practice somewhere where you don't usually practice.... like the basement of the dorms."
ME: "I would, but those pianos are complete crap.... I mean, some of them are missing legs!"
CD: "Well, I just think that you probably like the attention...."
ME: (sighs) "Ya know, she just seems like a nice person...."
CD: "She seems like a skank. Just a nasty big breasted skank."
ME: "I'm not even remotely attracted to her! Her boobs are bigger than my head!.... It's a public nuisance..."
CD: "And another thing! Every time I have a conversation with her, she's always going on about how fantastic you are! It's friggin' annoying! YOU ARE SPOKEN FOR! And she needs to keep her hands off you..."
ME: "She hasn't had her hands on me.... ewe. She's just got a crush... it's no big deal!"
CD: "Well. I don't like it. And I don't like her. She's repugnant. And I think you should stop hanging out with her."
ME: "I mean... if it really makes you that unhappy.... (eye roll) Ill make sure to to instigate anything with her.... ya know. Disengage."
We were quite for a while after that, and just walked without speaking, in the half light back to Christine's room.
CD: "Well.... I dunno. Maybe Im just being a total bitch about all this. We just don't get to hang out as much as we used to."
She started to tear up a little bit, and I leaned in to hug her. Just a quick one though. Ya never know who might be watching from a window in the dorms and find the need to punish you for a harmless gesture of affection. Christine, by comparison to Melodie... did not smell like bathroom cleaning liquid. She smelled like a normal girl. Like skin, and shampoo.
ME: "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it bothered you all that much. She's starting to get on my nerves too.... And you're right.... She smells awful."
She was right about us not hanging out as much anymore... I'd transferred out of the Dining Common work force and begged a job from the people at the Museum & Gallery. Which is honestly the quietest easiest job anyone could ask for. I spent afternoons dressed in a simple black suit, and blue button downs and usually my own choice of an hideous tie. My tie choice was never ever calculated.... and most of them were yard sale purchases. All refugees from the seventies who had managed to not be thrown away or burned due to kitsch. I would study note cards and write poetry whilst wandering around in the thickly carpeted dimly lit rooms. Rooms filled with archaic and post Renaissance paintings. Huge... wall encompassing works in which the Virgin Mary would look down peacefully at her christ child son. All works on thick topics like sin, or death.... or the devil. The whole place couldn't have gotten more than 12 visitors a day. And that was fine by me... I loved the luxury of the quiet Bach string quartets on repeat on the PA system.... and the dusty emotionless atmosphere. It was nice. It seemed like a place between places.... Peace and quiet, only occasionally interrupted by the occasional group of antique humans there to look at the antique art.
Because of the new work schedule though... whatever free time I had to spend with Christine had been ganked around so that our schedules no longer coincided.
After our sad little fight, I trudged back to my room, planted myself in my bed, and stealthily put in my ear-buds. Like so many other convenient personal items, earphones were considered contraband. Being discovered with them could land you an easy 50 demerits. Presumably because you could be listening to any of the many types of music forbidden from student consumption... Such as rock, r&b, rap, jazz, soul, and polka. Whatever. Id had a bad day, and I'll be darned if I was going to chill out in my room listening to negro spirituals. No sir. All the other roomies were busy about the lords work.... So I cranked up some tunes and did a little homework reading.
::Knock Knock::
Who now? Uhn. I ditched the ear-buds and my ipod.... tossed them way back onto my bunk and jumped/slid into the chair at the desk. Just in time.... In walks Danny Callahan. Danny is a tallish troll-like creature. With rudimentary spacial perception and infantile logic skills. He's 6'1'' with a blond crew cut and a face like an Irish potato. Also, his accent was something like 'The Real White Trash of Boston Mass." Also, he was this years hall leader. So in addition to being obtuse, it was his job to make sure that everyone was living or dying by the Almighty Handbook.
DC: "Hey."
ME: (I look up from my text book and slowly blink at him.) "Hello Daniel."
DC: "So.... what are ya doin?"
ME: "I'm trying to decided if you got your polo out of an egg machine."
DC: "uh..... ok." He said wondering about the room. He was delighted to discover Roland's soccer ball in the corner and began punting it around. Callahan was, of course, a soccer player.
DC: "So... they've got you rooming with Roland. I wonder why that is...."
ME: "I haven't the slightest. I can only assume it's because Roland is so very fond of me..."
DC: "Ha..... funny. You should be nice to people. They'd like you better."
ME: "I have no intention of being in-genuine with people to win their affection. Besides, soccer players are all the same... Once you've met one, you've met them all." I finished dismissively returning to my reading.
Callahan continued to mill about the room until spotting the ipod, tossed aside.
DC: "So.... who's ipod is that?"
ME: "Oh that old thing!? It belongs to me.
DC: "Well you need to turn it in.... You could get in trouble for having it."
ME: "Yes, thank you Daniel.... I am aware of regulations. And.... Ill turn it in.... I'm just waiting for Hell to freeze over."
DC: "Hey!" He said, pointing at me with mock anger. "Not funny."
ME: "You're right its not funny! How am I supposed to get anything done listening to the air conditioner run. My tunes help me concentrate!"
Danny apparently had lost interest in the conversation, or had rediscovered how fun soccer balls really are... because he was back to his punting. I have always been fascinated by obtuse people. Much as Pavlov was fascinated by dog saliva. It's not that Danny wasn't friendly, or that he was doing his job too well. It was just that I had serious doubts about his being a Counseling major. How could he possibly be good at that? Weren't most of his people lobster fishermen anyways?
DC: "Don't you ever get tired of playing the system?" He asked in a sparkling moment of clarity and relevance.
ME: "Well.... yeah sometimes." I said with earnestness, and then with a passionate intensity.... "But if I do not play this "system".... I ask you.... How then shall it be played!?"
Danny was not impressed with my theatrics. And decided to leave without ceremony....
DC:" You're weird." He said popping his head back in the door before leaving....
ME: "Thank you!" I sang merrily back at him.
CD:"I just don't understand why you like hanging out with her.... She's fat... and obnoxious and she smells like cherry blossom rape." She said flatly.
ME: "I mean.... It's not like I'm trying to make her into a best friend or anything... She just always seems to show up whenever I'm practicing."
CD: " Well.... why don't you practice somewhere where you don't usually practice.... like the basement of the dorms."
ME: "I would, but those pianos are complete crap.... I mean, some of them are missing legs!"
CD: "Well, I just think that you probably like the attention...."
ME: (sighs) "Ya know, she just seems like a nice person...."
CD: "She seems like a skank. Just a nasty big breasted skank."
ME: "I'm not even remotely attracted to her! Her boobs are bigger than my head!.... It's a public nuisance..."
CD: "And another thing! Every time I have a conversation with her, she's always going on about how fantastic you are! It's friggin' annoying! YOU ARE SPOKEN FOR! And she needs to keep her hands off you..."
ME: "She hasn't had her hands on me.... ewe. She's just got a crush... it's no big deal!"
CD: "Well. I don't like it. And I don't like her. She's repugnant. And I think you should stop hanging out with her."
ME: "I mean... if it really makes you that unhappy.... (eye roll) Ill make sure to to instigate anything with her.... ya know. Disengage."
We were quite for a while after that, and just walked without speaking, in the half light back to Christine's room.
CD: "Well.... I dunno. Maybe Im just being a total bitch about all this. We just don't get to hang out as much as we used to."
She started to tear up a little bit, and I leaned in to hug her. Just a quick one though. Ya never know who might be watching from a window in the dorms and find the need to punish you for a harmless gesture of affection. Christine, by comparison to Melodie... did not smell like bathroom cleaning liquid. She smelled like a normal girl. Like skin, and shampoo.
ME: "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it bothered you all that much. She's starting to get on my nerves too.... And you're right.... She smells awful."
She was right about us not hanging out as much anymore... I'd transferred out of the Dining Common work force and begged a job from the people at the Museum & Gallery. Which is honestly the quietest easiest job anyone could ask for. I spent afternoons dressed in a simple black suit, and blue button downs and usually my own choice of an hideous tie. My tie choice was never ever calculated.... and most of them were yard sale purchases. All refugees from the seventies who had managed to not be thrown away or burned due to kitsch. I would study note cards and write poetry whilst wandering around in the thickly carpeted dimly lit rooms. Rooms filled with archaic and post Renaissance paintings. Huge... wall encompassing works in which the Virgin Mary would look down peacefully at her christ child son. All works on thick topics like sin, or death.... or the devil. The whole place couldn't have gotten more than 12 visitors a day. And that was fine by me... I loved the luxury of the quiet Bach string quartets on repeat on the PA system.... and the dusty emotionless atmosphere. It was nice. It seemed like a place between places.... Peace and quiet, only occasionally interrupted by the occasional group of antique humans there to look at the antique art.
Because of the new work schedule though... whatever free time I had to spend with Christine had been ganked around so that our schedules no longer coincided.
After our sad little fight, I trudged back to my room, planted myself in my bed, and stealthily put in my ear-buds. Like so many other convenient personal items, earphones were considered contraband. Being discovered with them could land you an easy 50 demerits. Presumably because you could be listening to any of the many types of music forbidden from student consumption... Such as rock, r&b, rap, jazz, soul, and polka. Whatever. Id had a bad day, and I'll be darned if I was going to chill out in my room listening to negro spirituals. No sir. All the other roomies were busy about the lords work.... So I cranked up some tunes and did a little homework reading.
::Knock Knock::
Who now? Uhn. I ditched the ear-buds and my ipod.... tossed them way back onto my bunk and jumped/slid into the chair at the desk. Just in time.... In walks Danny Callahan. Danny is a tallish troll-like creature. With rudimentary spacial perception and infantile logic skills. He's 6'1'' with a blond crew cut and a face like an Irish potato. Also, his accent was something like 'The Real White Trash of Boston Mass." Also, he was this years hall leader. So in addition to being obtuse, it was his job to make sure that everyone was living or dying by the Almighty Handbook.
DC: "Hey."
ME: (I look up from my text book and slowly blink at him.) "Hello Daniel."
DC: "So.... what are ya doin?"
ME: "I'm trying to decided if you got your polo out of an egg machine."
DC: "uh..... ok." He said wondering about the room. He was delighted to discover Roland's soccer ball in the corner and began punting it around. Callahan was, of course, a soccer player.
DC: "So... they've got you rooming with Roland. I wonder why that is...."
ME: "I haven't the slightest. I can only assume it's because Roland is so very fond of me..."
DC: "Ha..... funny. You should be nice to people. They'd like you better."
ME: "I have no intention of being in-genuine with people to win their affection. Besides, soccer players are all the same... Once you've met one, you've met them all." I finished dismissively returning to my reading.
Callahan continued to mill about the room until spotting the ipod, tossed aside.
DC: "So.... who's ipod is that?"
ME: "Oh that old thing!? It belongs to me.
DC: "Well you need to turn it in.... You could get in trouble for having it."
ME: "Yes, thank you Daniel.... I am aware of regulations. And.... Ill turn it in.... I'm just waiting for Hell to freeze over."
DC: "Hey!" He said, pointing at me with mock anger. "Not funny."
ME: "You're right its not funny! How am I supposed to get anything done listening to the air conditioner run. My tunes help me concentrate!"
Danny apparently had lost interest in the conversation, or had rediscovered how fun soccer balls really are... because he was back to his punting. I have always been fascinated by obtuse people. Much as Pavlov was fascinated by dog saliva. It's not that Danny wasn't friendly, or that he was doing his job too well. It was just that I had serious doubts about his being a Counseling major. How could he possibly be good at that? Weren't most of his people lobster fishermen anyways?
DC: "Don't you ever get tired of playing the system?" He asked in a sparkling moment of clarity and relevance.
ME: "Well.... yeah sometimes." I said with earnestness, and then with a passionate intensity.... "But if I do not play this "system".... I ask you.... How then shall it be played!?"
Danny was not impressed with my theatrics. And decided to leave without ceremony....
DC:" You're weird." He said popping his head back in the door before leaving....
ME: "Thank you!" I sang merrily back at him.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Collusion: Part XIV
[kuh-loo-zhuh
n]
n] - a secret agreement, esp. for fraudulent or treacherous purposes; conspiracy: Some of his employees were acting in collusion to rob him.
Three months past, and things continued much as they had started. Ritual dinners with the friends became even more ritualistic and more members were added to the group. Tisha and Richard were the quietest members of the group, preferring to silently eat cereal for dinner, and eye rape one another as the rest of us ate normal things for dinner and rolled our eyes at them. I can understand their frustration. Research supports the idea that men and women are most fertile in their early twenties. Do not forget dear reader, that here behind the walls of khrist's kastle, sex is absolutely forbidden. I give you a demographic of ladies and gentlemen that are primed for copulation, whose very bodies have evolved to seek mates and reproduce, and should they attempted to fulfill that evolutionary imperative and are discovered by the authority... their academic pursuits will be instantly terminated. Their belongings will be immediately collected and dumped onto a sidewalk (day or night) and their nearest and dearest relative will be contacted and informed of their loved ones shameful actions. That's not to say that students weren't having 'relations.' On the contrary. Students were boinking in every nook and cranny. It's more the fact that if students wanted to engage in sexual activity they had to go through hours and hours of secret preparations, tell lies, find an abandoned movie theater somewhere, lock themselves in a cleaning closet... or pull in a favor from a Wealthy Townie. I cannot begin to imagine the circ de soleil style maneuverings that it must require to accomplish successful copulation in a small room filled with vacuum cleaners and bleach, but I assume Tisha and Richard had burned that bridge when they came to it.
I was so naive then. My parents were so uncomfortable about the idea of explaining normal sexual relations to me, that at long last when I was 15 years old, they were finally brave enough to leave a copy of 'Dick and Jane's Guide to Your Changing Body' on my bed one sunny afternoon. 'Dick and Jane's Guide' was so amazingly ambiguous as to be worthless. Cartoon characters had conversations in little speech balloons about growing pubic hair and feelings that the rest of the world called being 'horny.' I already knew that I had a penis, I just had no idea what to do with it. Thankyou Dick and Jane for your mindless dribble, but I had finally turned to the internet for the most expansive over-share an innocent 15 year old mind had ever experienced.
Dear Parents:
I know you feel embarrassed about telling your spawn about how you created them. I understand. The fact of the matter is your child is going to grow up to be a very fine lady/ gentleman and the sooner we get this uncomfortable little bit of information out of the way the better. Don't wait for your children to start asking questions about sex to have a frank discussion about it. Regardless of the social stigma that your own archaic development may have placed on human sexuality, the conversation doesn't have to be awkward or frightening! Plan to tell them in a casual and perhaps humorous way sometime before they turn 12. Be specific, blunt and nonchalant. It will keep your children from developing silly ideas about intercourse and having ridiculously inaccurate conversations about it with their playmates. I know you're scared! And it's normal to feel that way.... but trust my professional opinion. I am after-all an acclaimed blogger.
Most Sincerely Yours in Christian Love,
Josh Cupcake
Would that my parents would have received this kind bit of encouragement from the grown-up me. Would that I were able to fax that little psa back in time to my anxiety fraught care givers. I can only image that I would have had a much more normal outlook on sex in general and not have developed to consider the act barbaric and vulgar. Nay disgusting even. It's a shame there's not a more enjoyable way to create offspring I thought.
We were drawing quickly to the close of the school-year. Christine and I had become quite chummy and did nothing but tell each other amusing stories about the other goings on in Khrist's Kastle, and send long laughably romantic notes to one another in glittery ink. We were quite the couple. Never apart. Never fighting. Always carefree and fun. I loved her. She loved me back. It was simple. We could easily waste 3 or 4 hours talking on the phone about class or pranks that we had be playing on fellow members of our dormitories. I remember those times fondly.... but Im quite doubtful that she does. I'm sure that now she prefers not to remember them at all.
One Saturday's developments came to stand out in my memory as one of the defining moments of my first years schooling. The members of my room were all milling about doing their morning activities. Laundry. Larry was not present. I had decided that this was one of those mornings that I wasn't going to do anything much but attempt to sleep in. Devin had been busy about his mocking me well into the wee hours of the morning and I was getting to the point were I was having long day dreams that centered on creative ways to light him on fire without being incarcerated. I was laying in bed texting friends to find out who might wanna go walk around the mall and spend money on things we couldn't possibly need. Chester was polishing a pair of his shoes filling the air with that acrid smell that waxy shoe polish always has. Ramon was just ending an exited phone conversation with someone who either understood spanish, or was amazingly good at pretending they did. These days I'm nearly fluent in espanol. I thought learning the language would have been helpful for me to understand the slanderous insults that were slung at me, and perhaps discover any plans that these brutes may have to cause physical injury or perhaps even my death. Everyone from puerto rico has clearly had experience in a violent street gang, i reasoned; as my first experiences with them seemed to support. I imagined also that in order for a young puerto rican boy to ascend to man-hood, he must complete a series of rites of passage. Fabricating a car-bomb from found objects. Successfully selling a kilo of crack cocaine. And/ or clubbing at least two baby seals to death... providing food and clothing for the tribe.
Without knocking, in pops Devin. I rolled over in my top bunk and pulled the covers over my head to indicate my disapproval of his presence. Christ! Didn't this boy have a hobby? Perhaps classes? Anything? Meh. Devin would not take the hint that i would rather not have conversation with him. This time to aid in his attempts to get my attention, he had brought a 5 ft long 2 inch by 2 inch piece of hardwood trim that he had broken off of some piece of furniture in his room. He drug it into the room... the wood making a rasping sound on the carpet. This time in addition to his insults, he proceeded to jab at me with the stick, with quick impish jabs.
DEVIN: "Wakey, wakey! Awww..... Little Joshie is sweepy?"
OOOOOoooooh no. No. No. No. This is not how this is gonna go. Devin's actions had caught the attention of Ramon and Chester, and they stopped what they were doing to watch this new entertainment. They were laughing. In one smooth motion I rolled over and jumped the 4ish feet to the floor. Tossing my cell phone away. I was so angry that one of my eyes was twitching as adrenaline poured into my veins, brushing my heart rate up to match that of a field mouse. I am a small man. I say that without shame, but it bears being mentioned. Im 5'6'' and weigh 130 pounds. Devin had a few inches and twenty some pounds on me. But these facts were well beyond my logical powers at the time. He took a couple more jabs at me with the stick, landing a crack on my shoulder as i attempted to snatch the stick from him.
DEVIN: (Laughing) "Oh! He's angry now!.... Mira! Mira el pato!"
The others got comfortable. This was obviously going to be a scene. There was a struggle for a moment as I was able to wrestle the stick out of his hands. "Get out of my room!" I yelled at him as it was I jabbing at him to try and scare him out. The laughter continued as I pushed him toward the open door.
DEVIN: "Oh look! He's good with a stick eh?" he said getting more laughter from the other boys.
It was at that moment that seemed to lose all sense of control of myself. What ever part of me that was good and kind slid away and some other me took over. I put as much tork into swinging this ridiculous weapon as i could and landed a sharp blow to his right clavicle. People who behave like dogs, should be punished like dogs. The blow hurt enough that he was enraged now too.
He sulked back across the hall cussing at me in spanish. I went to close the door... and planned on returning to my bed and my texting, thinking that the little fight was over. Not so... just as had turned from closing the door in charged Devin. The bastard grabbed my neck from behind and used his body weight to push me to the floor, which we both landed on with a thud. "Think you're gonna push me around ya little fag?" He yelled as his grip got tighter and tighter on my throat. I couldn't get my knees or elbows underneath me for a few long seconds as he weighed so much.... and I was choking and trying to squirm away from him. I was starting to think I might black out. I couldn't breathe and my vision was starting to go white a little. Finally I was able to flip over and i used my feet to kick him off of me. I jumped up quick before he could get his bearings from being shoved off and flung a right hook that landed just under his left eye. He fell back to the floor and I looked for a new tool to use in the fight... I snatched up a wooden chair and was about to start bludgeoning when Ramon and Chester seemed to realize I was going to kill Devin.
"Whoah! Whoah! Calm down!" They were yelling... trying to get in between him and me. Ramon started trying to help Devin get up, and Chester made himself into a big black bouncer and held me back as i tossed the chair aside and struggled to get at Devin... who was now cowering...
I was still livid... "Stay the fuck out of my room you little shit-stain!" I screamed at him wiping blood from my lip as Chester push me back towards the other end of the room.
Ramon helped Devin stagger out of the room as i was left shaking from rage. I went to the sink to see what damage had been done. Chester was quiet as usual. Just as if these types of goings on were absolutely normal. I washed the blood off my face and spat the rest of it out of my mouth still shaking, looking in the mirror. Ramon returned from the hall and quietly shutting the door.
"Man, I think you gave him a black eye...." He said.
I didn't reply. I wished I had done worse.
One Saturday's developments came to stand out in my memory as one of the defining moments of my first years schooling. The members of my room were all milling about doing their morning activities. Laundry. Larry was not present. I had decided that this was one of those mornings that I wasn't going to do anything much but attempt to sleep in. Devin had been busy about his mocking me well into the wee hours of the morning and I was getting to the point were I was having long day dreams that centered on creative ways to light him on fire without being incarcerated. I was laying in bed texting friends to find out who might wanna go walk around the mall and spend money on things we couldn't possibly need. Chester was polishing a pair of his shoes filling the air with that acrid smell that waxy shoe polish always has. Ramon was just ending an exited phone conversation with someone who either understood spanish, or was amazingly good at pretending they did. These days I'm nearly fluent in espanol. I thought learning the language would have been helpful for me to understand the slanderous insults that were slung at me, and perhaps discover any plans that these brutes may have to cause physical injury or perhaps even my death. Everyone from puerto rico has clearly had experience in a violent street gang, i reasoned; as my first experiences with them seemed to support. I imagined also that in order for a young puerto rican boy to ascend to man-hood, he must complete a series of rites of passage. Fabricating a car-bomb from found objects. Successfully selling a kilo of crack cocaine. And/ or clubbing at least two baby seals to death... providing food and clothing for the tribe.
Without knocking, in pops Devin. I rolled over in my top bunk and pulled the covers over my head to indicate my disapproval of his presence. Christ! Didn't this boy have a hobby? Perhaps classes? Anything? Meh. Devin would not take the hint that i would rather not have conversation with him. This time to aid in his attempts to get my attention, he had brought a 5 ft long 2 inch by 2 inch piece of hardwood trim that he had broken off of some piece of furniture in his room. He drug it into the room... the wood making a rasping sound on the carpet. This time in addition to his insults, he proceeded to jab at me with the stick, with quick impish jabs.
DEVIN: "Wakey, wakey! Awww..... Little Joshie is sweepy?"
OOOOOoooooh no. No. No. No. This is not how this is gonna go. Devin's actions had caught the attention of Ramon and Chester, and they stopped what they were doing to watch this new entertainment. They were laughing. In one smooth motion I rolled over and jumped the 4ish feet to the floor. Tossing my cell phone away. I was so angry that one of my eyes was twitching as adrenaline poured into my veins, brushing my heart rate up to match that of a field mouse. I am a small man. I say that without shame, but it bears being mentioned. Im 5'6'' and weigh 130 pounds. Devin had a few inches and twenty some pounds on me. But these facts were well beyond my logical powers at the time. He took a couple more jabs at me with the stick, landing a crack on my shoulder as i attempted to snatch the stick from him.
DEVIN: (Laughing) "Oh! He's angry now!.... Mira! Mira el pato!"
The others got comfortable. This was obviously going to be a scene. There was a struggle for a moment as I was able to wrestle the stick out of his hands. "Get out of my room!" I yelled at him as it was I jabbing at him to try and scare him out. The laughter continued as I pushed him toward the open door.
DEVIN: "Oh look! He's good with a stick eh?" he said getting more laughter from the other boys.
It was at that moment that seemed to lose all sense of control of myself. What ever part of me that was good and kind slid away and some other me took over. I put as much tork into swinging this ridiculous weapon as i could and landed a sharp blow to his right clavicle. People who behave like dogs, should be punished like dogs. The blow hurt enough that he was enraged now too.
He sulked back across the hall cussing at me in spanish. I went to close the door... and planned on returning to my bed and my texting, thinking that the little fight was over. Not so... just as had turned from closing the door in charged Devin. The bastard grabbed my neck from behind and used his body weight to push me to the floor, which we both landed on with a thud. "Think you're gonna push me around ya little fag?" He yelled as his grip got tighter and tighter on my throat. I couldn't get my knees or elbows underneath me for a few long seconds as he weighed so much.... and I was choking and trying to squirm away from him. I was starting to think I might black out. I couldn't breathe and my vision was starting to go white a little. Finally I was able to flip over and i used my feet to kick him off of me. I jumped up quick before he could get his bearings from being shoved off and flung a right hook that landed just under his left eye. He fell back to the floor and I looked for a new tool to use in the fight... I snatched up a wooden chair and was about to start bludgeoning when Ramon and Chester seemed to realize I was going to kill Devin.
"Whoah! Whoah! Calm down!" They were yelling... trying to get in between him and me. Ramon started trying to help Devin get up, and Chester made himself into a big black bouncer and held me back as i tossed the chair aside and struggled to get at Devin... who was now cowering...
I was still livid... "Stay the fuck out of my room you little shit-stain!" I screamed at him wiping blood from my lip as Chester push me back towards the other end of the room.
Ramon helped Devin stagger out of the room as i was left shaking from rage. I went to the sink to see what damage had been done. Chester was quiet as usual. Just as if these types of goings on were absolutely normal. I washed the blood off my face and spat the rest of it out of my mouth still shaking, looking in the mirror. Ramon returned from the hall and quietly shutting the door.
"Man, I think you gave him a black eye...." He said.
I didn't reply. I wished I had done worse.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Collusion: Part XII
Words. Powerful words. They take shape and leave our mouths. Such harmless little things made out of carbon dioxide. Little puffs of a toxin and a bit of vibration made with teeth and tongue. Or little symbols on white paper. These are the tools that we use to fabricate community. How odd that stubby doses of poison should give us so much... should become a deity of sorts making so many choices for us.
Collusion celebrated 1,000 page views this week and I cant think of a better way to slide into Christmas than by inviting my friends and my foes to collude with me. To follow the pied piper. To admit to ourselves if only for those moments that we share with our thoughts and a computer screen that corruption is everywhere. It is who we are. It's the one thing that you can be sure of in any new person that you meet. And why is corruption so pervasive, you might ask? That's simple! because its so delicious.
Christmas break droned on. We chopped wood for the fireplace. A great hulking thing that's the centerpiece of the largest room in my house. Enormous 13 and 15 foot logs my dad had chainsawed into submission were piled up in my back yard at the edge of the woods; and every other day or so my brother, or my dad or myself would take an axe and cut away enough wood for the next couple of cold nights.
I'm from a very close-nit community. In a town that cant have a population of more than 3000 people. Its so rural as to be cliche. As ive mentioned before, people farm there. They have all their lives. Their fathers did, and their father's fathers did. Our neighbors all came to church with us. A church which my father had left the sins of his wild youth to found, and one which he continues to lead to this day. As i consider it, most of my early musical training was intended for use in worship. As a result, I have a mental database of hundreds of hymn tunes that I can play with my eyes closed, in any key. When I was home over Christmas break I fell neatly back into the roles that I had played before. At home and at church as well. All told it was a congregation of about 40 people. The number changed from season to season as southern people tend to have disagreements about such highly important religious matters as women who wear pants and those obviously diabolical members of the congregation who attend movie theaters. No joke. Anyways, our church services met twice on sundays and once on wednesday nights. We all met in a beige corrugated metal church building in the middle of a seven acre field of green lawn, behind one of those stone and metal church signs that you can rearrange letters on. You can make them say whatever you like...
My dad was mostly responsible for these messages. One could always rely on them to be inspiring. The members of the church were the most fascinating group of people on the planet. All ok, plain folks with thick syrupy accents. Loud women who wore too much mascara, and ate too much red meat. And quiet men who sat beside these women.
I liked church. I loved the routine of it all. The ritual. We gather... sing old old songs about christ's blood and its power to make us perfect. We'd pray, or be lead in prayer... and then my father would preach a message about sin. Faith. Or the evils and destructing force of extra marital sex. His sermons were all peppered with his own brand of gawdy obvious humor. I have so memorized the lilting pace of my fathers sermons that i can predict what he's going to say next. It's a type of relationship that not many people have the opportunity to experience with their fathers and as such I feel quite lucky to have grown up that way. Each facet of my fathers belief system was made plainly evident written out in hour after hour of monologue. Layers and walls. A labyrinth of hedges looping and twisting into a maze of 'do' and 'do nots.' Sermon after sermon I received a powerful view of this bank of rules.... Fascinating and complex.
The music leader at my church is named Charles. Charles McMillan. He's a man of colossal girth. I estimate that he weighs very close to five hundred pounds, and oddly enough is still mobile. He's been a friend of the families for as long as i could remember. Apparently at one time he was quite average size, but from what ive been able to gather; a love interest in college left him with emotional scars that he had tried to patch up with lots and lots of brisket. Charles is roughly 46 years old. He has been in charge of all the songs sung, and all the notes played at our little community church for very close to 10 years i suppose. Charles and I had been cordial to one another since I had met him until one day when I had prepared a little piano piece for church, he told me that i was "never going to be a good pianist unless i learned to read music." As you can imagine... the comment did very bad things for a cordial relationship. My playing from sight was remedial at best. Lessons had been cast away patch work things with hit or miss training from country bumpkins who owned pianos. Ah well.
From that moment however Charles and I became mortal enemies. If the both of us were in a room you could feel the temperature drop. The water vapor in the air would instantly crystallize. Charles was part of the reason for my pursuing piano so decidedly throughout highschool... and undeniably had something to do with my two year stint with bulimia when I was 17 and 18.
During holiday services Charles and I danced our icy dance of cordiality and hatred like two quiet little pageant queens; needing attention much as daisies need sunlight. And so i passed away the few days that remained of my break from school. In a very few days i would return to what was sure to be hostile environment. I would be stronger than those boys at school though. They'd see. They wouldn't break me.
Collusion celebrated 1,000 page views this week and I cant think of a better way to slide into Christmas than by inviting my friends and my foes to collude with me. To follow the pied piper. To admit to ourselves if only for those moments that we share with our thoughts and a computer screen that corruption is everywhere. It is who we are. It's the one thing that you can be sure of in any new person that you meet. And why is corruption so pervasive, you might ask? That's simple! because its so delicious.
Christmas break droned on. We chopped wood for the fireplace. A great hulking thing that's the centerpiece of the largest room in my house. Enormous 13 and 15 foot logs my dad had chainsawed into submission were piled up in my back yard at the edge of the woods; and every other day or so my brother, or my dad or myself would take an axe and cut away enough wood for the next couple of cold nights.
I'm from a very close-nit community. In a town that cant have a population of more than 3000 people. Its so rural as to be cliche. As ive mentioned before, people farm there. They have all their lives. Their fathers did, and their father's fathers did. Our neighbors all came to church with us. A church which my father had left the sins of his wild youth to found, and one which he continues to lead to this day. As i consider it, most of my early musical training was intended for use in worship. As a result, I have a mental database of hundreds of hymn tunes that I can play with my eyes closed, in any key. When I was home over Christmas break I fell neatly back into the roles that I had played before. At home and at church as well. All told it was a congregation of about 40 people. The number changed from season to season as southern people tend to have disagreements about such highly important religious matters as women who wear pants and those obviously diabolical members of the congregation who attend movie theaters. No joke. Anyways, our church services met twice on sundays and once on wednesday nights. We all met in a beige corrugated metal church building in the middle of a seven acre field of green lawn, behind one of those stone and metal church signs that you can rearrange letters on. You can make them say whatever you like...
"POT LUCK THIS SUNDAY!"
or
"DO RIGHT 'TIL THE STARS FALL"
or
"CHCH. WHAT'S MISSING!? U R!"
My dad was mostly responsible for these messages. One could always rely on them to be inspiring. The members of the church were the most fascinating group of people on the planet. All ok, plain folks with thick syrupy accents. Loud women who wore too much mascara, and ate too much red meat. And quiet men who sat beside these women.
I liked church. I loved the routine of it all. The ritual. We gather... sing old old songs about christ's blood and its power to make us perfect. We'd pray, or be lead in prayer... and then my father would preach a message about sin. Faith. Or the evils and destructing force of extra marital sex. His sermons were all peppered with his own brand of gawdy obvious humor. I have so memorized the lilting pace of my fathers sermons that i can predict what he's going to say next. It's a type of relationship that not many people have the opportunity to experience with their fathers and as such I feel quite lucky to have grown up that way. Each facet of my fathers belief system was made plainly evident written out in hour after hour of monologue. Layers and walls. A labyrinth of hedges looping and twisting into a maze of 'do' and 'do nots.' Sermon after sermon I received a powerful view of this bank of rules.... Fascinating and complex.
The music leader at my church is named Charles. Charles McMillan. He's a man of colossal girth. I estimate that he weighs very close to five hundred pounds, and oddly enough is still mobile. He's been a friend of the families for as long as i could remember. Apparently at one time he was quite average size, but from what ive been able to gather; a love interest in college left him with emotional scars that he had tried to patch up with lots and lots of brisket. Charles is roughly 46 years old. He has been in charge of all the songs sung, and all the notes played at our little community church for very close to 10 years i suppose. Charles and I had been cordial to one another since I had met him until one day when I had prepared a little piano piece for church, he told me that i was "never going to be a good pianist unless i learned to read music." As you can imagine... the comment did very bad things for a cordial relationship. My playing from sight was remedial at best. Lessons had been cast away patch work things with hit or miss training from country bumpkins who owned pianos. Ah well.
From that moment however Charles and I became mortal enemies. If the both of us were in a room you could feel the temperature drop. The water vapor in the air would instantly crystallize. Charles was part of the reason for my pursuing piano so decidedly throughout highschool... and undeniably had something to do with my two year stint with bulimia when I was 17 and 18.
During holiday services Charles and I danced our icy dance of cordiality and hatred like two quiet little pageant queens; needing attention much as daisies need sunlight. And so i passed away the few days that remained of my break from school. In a very few days i would return to what was sure to be hostile environment. I would be stronger than those boys at school though. They'd see. They wouldn't break me.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Collusion: Part X
And so it began. It was written out in red letters. I had my suspicions confirmed. Not everyone here was my friend. I was a rogue program... The others that fit more perfectly into the matrix were taking notice... they would find a way to have me deleted.
I should not have been surprised. I had seen this type of behavior before. The data was already part of a working map.... a grid that exists in all societies. It is part of our genetic programming to instinctively isolate the weakest member of our group. To chase them out of our social network and prevent their weakness from infecting the gene pool. We instinctively consider the disabled, blind, weak and ill less a part of society... and for thousands of years this instinct has taught us to put our best genes forward.
Flash backwards ten years:
My family had gotten the idea that we should raise chickens. We should have fresh eggs that we wouldn't have to drive thirty minutes to the nearest large town and buy them. It was that convenience and the fact that my dad was overly fond of the idea of housing animals. My house was well situated off of a major highway.... thirty minutes south of the capitol of South Carolina. It was the largest agrarian county in the state. You could drive for miles and miles and see nothing but fields of cotton... soy beans and fields where the stubble of corn stalks remained from the year before.
12 Rhode Island Reds. We had raised them from chicks.... bought them from the seed store. I know what you're thinking... Laura Ingalls Wilder.... "oooooh paaaaaaw!" and all that. Not exactly. We didn't have horses. Either way we raised the chicks to adult hood... and even though i had taught them to behave, they were not so different than human beings. We kept them all together in a rather large coupe with little wooden boxes affixed to the wall where they could have a little privacy to lay their eggs. Much to my 13 year old horror.... I learned that these creatures looked out for not only their own interest... but apparently also the genetic health of the whole species. If one of the hens was discovered to be wounded... the others would mercilessly attack it... pecking at it to drive it away from the group and the food sources. It would seem that regardless of brain size; some tendencies stay the same cross species. The wounded hen would have to be guarded. Kept separate from the flock... otherwise the bullying wouldn't stop. And eventually the other hens would kill her.
I should have remembered these observances. And in truth i hadn't forgotten them... I just didn't realize exactly how helpful the memory would be. Alright... back to the story.
The end of the semester wash rushing nearer and I couldn't be more thankful for the fact. I pushed past Ramon on the way out of the room to dinner. Ever since Devin had taken such an interest in terrorizing me (he and his genitals had become a recurring late nite show) Ramon and Chester had taken it to mind that they would follow suit. But not in such a violent or dramatic way. I would over-hear an insult or two; or part of a funny story involving me and gang-rape. I couldn't make it all out... Even though i was picking up Spanish quickly; I wasn't what you'd call fluent. Of course it was embarassing... but i just thought that the best way to deal with it was to ignore it. Id never been bullied before. I always pretended not to hear... and left the room.
The group was getting together for supper... it had become a little ritual. We had made a little family. Me. Christine. Ami... Richard; Tisha... who by now were a lot more like Richard/Tisha. Gross. Affection. Christine and i had become good friends i would say. She and i were regulars to all the required campus events. We were both odd... and a good match as friends. I hadn't let any of those in the group know about the bullying. After all, if i showed weakness in either group... wouldn't it just incite more aggression? I was new to the game. So very new.
In a very few days the school would hold its annual lighting ceremony. One of the biggest cultural events of the Christmas season. Thousands of people would pile onto the front lawn of the campus. Choirs would have been in place on a stage and some figure head would lead the masses in prayers and songs.You know those obnoxiously feel good Christmas choral works? The ones that stores play all December in efforts to have you buy everything in the store? Those. Huge speakers everywhere. And and chunky mezzo soprano would eventually sing 'Oh Holy Night.' When she reached the most painful highest note.... some one would flip a huge switch and release millions of mega watts into the lights strung all over the place. Thousands of people would gasp... either from electrocution of because the combination choral music and intense lighting gave them the experience of communing with the divine. It was a spectacle. It was an event... The school had opened its arms to thousands of the unsuspecting public. Baked them cookies; gave them a show; and then told them how to go to heaven. It was marvelous to behold. It was fantastic. It was a colossal bear trap made out of fairy lights and guilt.
The group went and more or less had a good time. It was fun weaving through and around the crowds. Taking photos together and laughing about the goings on. The diversion was much needed. Finals were very soon approaching...
I was academically gifted. I guess that's what you'd call never studying. Maybe it was just that I really didn't have time to study. Meh. Either way i was looking forward to getting away from here for a while and returning to my little house in the big woods... it was so quiet there. I wanted the quiet for a few weeks.
Tensions in the room were getting higher and higher. I was getting closer to having a pretty nasty blow up. I try to steer clear of violence, but sooner or later you get tired and angry about a jack-ass swinging his dick around at you whilst flickering the lights at 1 am. I looked for ways to make peace. I tried talking Ramon, and less often Chester. I tried to discover personal interests and goals.... hobbies even. Chester seemed to enjoy lifting weights. But lets be honest... that's really not a conversation point. Ramon had more than enough to say about himself... but i found it difficult to be interested. The two had affectionately taken to calling me 'el pato.' Which i could only translate to meaning 'the duck.' There were worse things to be called i reasoned... and was too busy about my own business to give much thought to it. I just assumed that was their way of accepting me. Ramon had a birthday on the way. He'd be twenty soon. Kinda old to be a freshman i had thought. Ah well. Maybe they get a later start down mexico way.
My mother has the most beautiful hand writing. Really i'll have to show you a sample of it sometime. She writes in perfect, unbroken cursive. She always had a stash of stationary on hand... and never every misses a chance to send a birthday card or thank-you note. This was a habit that she had tried her hardest to pass on to us children. She had always stressed the importance of letting people know that you're thankful for what they've done for you. There was an elegance to it. An old-world gentility. Its one of the things that I love about my mother. She will always be a graceful thoughtful thing in my mind.
I decided that I could try and bridge the gap in the room a bit. I would get Ramon a birthday card. And so i did. I wasn't anything fussy. It was simple and plain. It mostly wished him well in black ink.... It congratulated him, I imagined, for making it thus far without having been killed in drug related violence in puerto rico. That was something he deserved to be congratulated for. My spanish skills at that point were ever so limited... but in an attempt to further bridge build.... I signed it.
"El Pato Magnifico"
-the magnificent duck-
I handed him the envelope. He looked at it suspiciously... but tore into it. He read it quickly... and read the signature. I was smiling. Hoping to see a thread of friendship being made. But I didn't understand. Something wasn't right. There was a black and serious look on his face...
He said thank-you. But that was it.
Ah well. A hit and a miss i thought.
I would later learn that 'pato' was a slang term used in puerto rico. It meant something akin to our english word 'faggot.' I was mortified. But by the time i had garnered this information it was something that the latino members of the room had been laughing about for weeks. They had no souls, i decided. Their hearts were black and loveless. I was beginning to understand genocide.
I never spoke of the incident again. I stayed to myself... in a very few days everything was over. I had Christmas to look forward to. Home. The home that i had taken for granted until now. I returned to the little house in the big woods and thought about all these things. There in the dark, in the wind in the pine trees i grew stronger. I vowed to make fewer mistakes.
I should not have been surprised. I had seen this type of behavior before. The data was already part of a working map.... a grid that exists in all societies. It is part of our genetic programming to instinctively isolate the weakest member of our group. To chase them out of our social network and prevent their weakness from infecting the gene pool. We instinctively consider the disabled, blind, weak and ill less a part of society... and for thousands of years this instinct has taught us to put our best genes forward.
Flash backwards ten years:
My family had gotten the idea that we should raise chickens. We should have fresh eggs that we wouldn't have to drive thirty minutes to the nearest large town and buy them. It was that convenience and the fact that my dad was overly fond of the idea of housing animals. My house was well situated off of a major highway.... thirty minutes south of the capitol of South Carolina. It was the largest agrarian county in the state. You could drive for miles and miles and see nothing but fields of cotton... soy beans and fields where the stubble of corn stalks remained from the year before.
12 Rhode Island Reds. We had raised them from chicks.... bought them from the seed store. I know what you're thinking... Laura Ingalls Wilder.... "oooooh paaaaaaw!" and all that. Not exactly. We didn't have horses. Either way we raised the chicks to adult hood... and even though i had taught them to behave, they were not so different than human beings. We kept them all together in a rather large coupe with little wooden boxes affixed to the wall where they could have a little privacy to lay their eggs. Much to my 13 year old horror.... I learned that these creatures looked out for not only their own interest... but apparently also the genetic health of the whole species. If one of the hens was discovered to be wounded... the others would mercilessly attack it... pecking at it to drive it away from the group and the food sources. It would seem that regardless of brain size; some tendencies stay the same cross species. The wounded hen would have to be guarded. Kept separate from the flock... otherwise the bullying wouldn't stop. And eventually the other hens would kill her.
I should have remembered these observances. And in truth i hadn't forgotten them... I just didn't realize exactly how helpful the memory would be. Alright... back to the story.
The end of the semester wash rushing nearer and I couldn't be more thankful for the fact. I pushed past Ramon on the way out of the room to dinner. Ever since Devin had taken such an interest in terrorizing me (he and his genitals had become a recurring late nite show) Ramon and Chester had taken it to mind that they would follow suit. But not in such a violent or dramatic way. I would over-hear an insult or two; or part of a funny story involving me and gang-rape. I couldn't make it all out... Even though i was picking up Spanish quickly; I wasn't what you'd call fluent. Of course it was embarassing... but i just thought that the best way to deal with it was to ignore it. Id never been bullied before. I always pretended not to hear... and left the room.
The group was getting together for supper... it had become a little ritual. We had made a little family. Me. Christine. Ami... Richard; Tisha... who by now were a lot more like Richard/Tisha. Gross. Affection. Christine and i had become good friends i would say. She and i were regulars to all the required campus events. We were both odd... and a good match as friends. I hadn't let any of those in the group know about the bullying. After all, if i showed weakness in either group... wouldn't it just incite more aggression? I was new to the game. So very new.
In a very few days the school would hold its annual lighting ceremony. One of the biggest cultural events of the Christmas season. Thousands of people would pile onto the front lawn of the campus. Choirs would have been in place on a stage and some figure head would lead the masses in prayers and songs.You know those obnoxiously feel good Christmas choral works? The ones that stores play all December in efforts to have you buy everything in the store? Those. Huge speakers everywhere. And and chunky mezzo soprano would eventually sing 'Oh Holy Night.' When she reached the most painful highest note.... some one would flip a huge switch and release millions of mega watts into the lights strung all over the place. Thousands of people would gasp... either from electrocution of because the combination choral music and intense lighting gave them the experience of communing with the divine. It was a spectacle. It was an event... The school had opened its arms to thousands of the unsuspecting public. Baked them cookies; gave them a show; and then told them how to go to heaven. It was marvelous to behold. It was fantastic. It was a colossal bear trap made out of fairy lights and guilt.
The group went and more or less had a good time. It was fun weaving through and around the crowds. Taking photos together and laughing about the goings on. The diversion was much needed. Finals were very soon approaching...
I was academically gifted. I guess that's what you'd call never studying. Maybe it was just that I really didn't have time to study. Meh. Either way i was looking forward to getting away from here for a while and returning to my little house in the big woods... it was so quiet there. I wanted the quiet for a few weeks.
Tensions in the room were getting higher and higher. I was getting closer to having a pretty nasty blow up. I try to steer clear of violence, but sooner or later you get tired and angry about a jack-ass swinging his dick around at you whilst flickering the lights at 1 am. I looked for ways to make peace. I tried talking Ramon, and less often Chester. I tried to discover personal interests and goals.... hobbies even. Chester seemed to enjoy lifting weights. But lets be honest... that's really not a conversation point. Ramon had more than enough to say about himself... but i found it difficult to be interested. The two had affectionately taken to calling me 'el pato.' Which i could only translate to meaning 'the duck.' There were worse things to be called i reasoned... and was too busy about my own business to give much thought to it. I just assumed that was their way of accepting me. Ramon had a birthday on the way. He'd be twenty soon. Kinda old to be a freshman i had thought. Ah well. Maybe they get a later start down mexico way.
My mother has the most beautiful hand writing. Really i'll have to show you a sample of it sometime. She writes in perfect, unbroken cursive. She always had a stash of stationary on hand... and never every misses a chance to send a birthday card or thank-you note. This was a habit that she had tried her hardest to pass on to us children. She had always stressed the importance of letting people know that you're thankful for what they've done for you. There was an elegance to it. An old-world gentility. Its one of the things that I love about my mother. She will always be a graceful thoughtful thing in my mind.
I decided that I could try and bridge the gap in the room a bit. I would get Ramon a birthday card. And so i did. I wasn't anything fussy. It was simple and plain. It mostly wished him well in black ink.... It congratulated him, I imagined, for making it thus far without having been killed in drug related violence in puerto rico. That was something he deserved to be congratulated for. My spanish skills at that point were ever so limited... but in an attempt to further bridge build.... I signed it.
"El Pato Magnifico"
-the magnificent duck-
I handed him the envelope. He looked at it suspiciously... but tore into it. He read it quickly... and read the signature. I was smiling. Hoping to see a thread of friendship being made. But I didn't understand. Something wasn't right. There was a black and serious look on his face...
He said thank-you. But that was it.
Ah well. A hit and a miss i thought.
I would later learn that 'pato' was a slang term used in puerto rico. It meant something akin to our english word 'faggot.' I was mortified. But by the time i had garnered this information it was something that the latino members of the room had been laughing about for weeks. They had no souls, i decided. Their hearts were black and loveless. I was beginning to understand genocide.
I never spoke of the incident again. I stayed to myself... in a very few days everything was over. I had Christmas to look forward to. Home. The home that i had taken for granted until now. I returned to the little house in the big woods and thought about all these things. There in the dark, in the wind in the pine trees i grew stronger. I vowed to make fewer mistakes.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Collusion: Part VI
My classes were stacked on top of one another in precision. Tonal Harmony. Speech. English 102. Lunch. Choir. History of Civilization. Orientation. Spanish. Then... mercifully enough... it was off to the kitchens. How odd I thought, that i should find relief in that steamy, noisy metal plated bunker. But find relief i did. There were other venues for thought there and most of them included re-traying meatloaf.
One of my fellow 'cooks' lived on my hall. He and I would strike up conversations at work. Mostly about how ridiculous this all was. Richard Reece was a good foot or so taller than me... with broad features and black hair. His accent smelled like Boston... or at least like it had driven through Boston. I didn't know they kept naming people 'richard' after 1953... but he had said that was his name; and i believed him.
We usually worked the same shift. The one that fell after the lunch rush.... So it was our responsibility to put away left overs and start dinner.
50 Stainless steel trays of leftover meatloaf needed to be re-trayed, covered in plastic wrap and wheeled on a 5 foot tall aluminum cart to the cavernous walk-in refrigerator. (One of 3 room sized refrigerators that averaged about 12 feet by 16- 20 feet.) I would drag my book-bag and my worries into the locker room in the basement, find the smallest uniform i could (being 5'6'' and weighing 120 pounds made that difficult when all the uniforms were designed for males) and leave all my stress and confusion with chord function and dangling modifiers with my book sack, in my locker.
The locker room smelled like sweat, stagnant water, and granulated carpet detergent. Or a combination of each of those. All the students who worked in the kitchens had to come there and suit-up first... I never spoke to anyone in the locker room. Not because I didn't know anyone's name who might have happened to be stowing their books away and putting on a uniform.... it just seemed un-natural to be conversational, or chatty in such a place. To be jovial in a basement room lined with avocado green lockers, and a variety of carpet patches on the cement floor.... a room with a adjacent military-style style showers.... it just seemed vulgar.
The anxiety over academic failure.... even though i had yet to expect failure.... blew over me like a strong, hot, summer wind. Like the wind before a thunder storm. As you can see, regardless of my early social programming, I had become extremely self motivated, and had even attached self- worth to my performance in every arena. Somehow though, there was no wind in the kitchen. The kitchen meant work. If there was anything that i could not fail at..... it was transferring 302 lbs of left-over meatloaf slices into shiny new stainless buffet trays, stretching clear plastic wrap over them, and push-pulling a cart full of trays to the gigantic refrigerator.
Sometimes it was chicken patties. Sometimes it was a vegetable that had been baked to within-an-inch-of-it's-life. Sometimes it was those 6'' little pizzas... but it was always the same process. Richard Reece was usually involved with getting a start on dinner. Which meant that he and the Staff Cooks would be lumbering around the Steam Pots... boiling 20 or so chickens at a time, turning 40 gallons of salty water into macaroni and paste, or punching frozen brussel sprouts out of their cardboard cartons, and into a vat of steaming seasoned stock. What would Julia Childs have said? It would have reduced her to tears. She would have been a broken woman.
At any given moment the Kitchen was populated by 20 plus workers. All clad in their white matching suits and tennis shoes that they wouldn't have minded throwing away. (I think that last sentence contained a dangling-modifier.... but in hind-sight I dont think any of the workers would have minded throwing away their works shoes, or their uniforms.) These twenty sum workers were either busy in the bakery department, having gargantuan machines kneed bread, or working in the basement fork-lifting pallets of macaroni to the elevator, or cooking with the Steam Pots, or even sometimes, in the very darkest corners of the kitchen basements.... i had heard that they butchered cattle. A fact that would be much later confirmed by my discovery of a bovine corpse in a large rubber trash can.
In the midst of all this commerce. In the very center of the kitchens.... there was a space reserved for mostly empty stainless tables... and me. Collect the leftovers. Re-pan the leftovers. Drag foods to the majestic cold room. The whole process was so very repetitious.... so delightfully designed, that there was nothing my mind needed to do here. In the continuity of a physical action, i could allow my thoughts to relax... and the tensions of my mind to evaporate. I used a large white plastic scoop for more liquidic food stuffs... or tongs for others. Maybe it was all the steam, maybe it was the fact that this part of my life was so un-like class or piano... But in the most profound irony, this place of gore and metal and blood, was my own little mecca.
I had a set list of very simple tasks. Most of them including meatloaf... but all the same, the tasks were simple... and no one was grading me on my ability to scoop peas.
My work hours would pass along. Not fast... Not slow really, and soon enough i would trudge down to the little room with all of those forlorn looking lockers and its naked bony showers, and id collect my things.
After stopping and practicing piano for a couple hours, my motivation to practice would fizzle out, and i headed back to my room.
Ramon and Chester were at their usual exploits. Fraternizing with the other troglodytes on the hall... being loud and making what Im sure what would have been considered witty snide remarks about my bookishness.... albeit, they might have only been considered 'witty' in the shanty-town countries of the boys' origin. I was working on a bit of homework when the hall leader pushed through a raucous tumble of boys who passed themselves as adults in some circles. Yes, the dormitory was always like this... and unrelenting drama of post-adolescent hormonal sociopaths... talking, laughing, and breaking into un-explainable wrestling matches.
Josh Roland was our Resident Assistant. Hall Leader. Sheriff of the third-floor west wing. I was his job to prevent action against the Almighty Handbook. He took his obligations seriously... the raucous in the hall was precisely why he was here. After making a group of boys stop bowling in the hall, he stepped in to say hello.
Roland was the picture of former highschool-football star, and by extension was a Handsome Soccer Player. One of 12 or so siblings that looked exactly like him, his father was a devout christian doctor in the vein of Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman.... a father who, i assume did not believe in birth control.
How Roland became both popular, and powerfully situated in The Authority, is probably a novel in and of itself. Broad shoulders. Obvious indention in the chin. Blue eyes and extensive self confidence. I think once or twice he appeared in promotional literature for the school. Glossy photo.... glowing credentials.... etc. etc.
Roland appeared through the dust from the crowd, and immediately engaged me in conversation.
JR: "Hey! You're Josh right?" (slight hair toss, and overtly pensive look.)
Me: "Yup... that's me...." (rubs eyes and offers blank expression...)
JR: "How's it goin' man? What ya sudyin' there?"
Me: "Harmony... its.... great...." (More bland expressions.)
JR: "Cool... is ah, Mr. Flowers still teaching first year a that?"
Me: "Yeah. I like it. He's slow.... easy to keep up with."
Roland at this juncture began making his was through the room taking a look of everyone's things, as if they were relics of a lost civilization. He settled on my alarm clock, which due to the fact that so little space in the room was left for me to claim when i arrived, was over across the room on my dresser. It was amazingly over sized, plain faced clock made out of chrome. Hammer and bells and all.
JR: ''Is this thing real?"
Me: "Do you mean, 'is it a clock?' or 'does it exist?" I quarried.
JR: (chuckles; eye roll) "I mean, does it work..." He plowed on.
Me: "Yes. It functions as it was intended." (Blinks.)
I was beginning to lose faith in establishing intelligent thought flow, outside of the class room. Never the less, I was not the instigator of this conversation, and could think of no way to end it without transgressing polity.
JR: "So who're you taking to artist series? You're a freshman right?"
Me: "Yeah, I am... What's artist series?"
JR: "It's where everyone gets dressed up and goes to a concert in the auditorium.... They throw one every coupla months. You invite a girl and buy her flowers.... ya know, it's kinda formal."
Me: (Blinks) "Oh. I think i remember reading something about that in the calender of events. When is that?"
JR: "It's in a couple weeks. I mean it's ok if you don't take a date.... Not all the freshmen get dates."
Me: (More Blinks) "Do I have to go?"
JR: (Ironic laughter) " Yeah... haha. You have to... but they're pretty cool usually."
Me: (moans... shoulder slump.) "Oh... great."
Whatever Roland had left to say has been deleted from my memory, with a slew of everything else that was un-memorable about him. Artist Series. Yet another challenge had presented itself. A formal event he said? hm.... I thumbed through the calendar of events to discover more about this mystery.
hm. Dates. Hmmmmm. The Freshmen don't usually get dates? Hm....
The concept of required entertainment was confusing... but then, there were so many other requirements here that i couldn't force logic behind that i didn't bother trying to make sense of it. It was something that must be done. Just like study. Just like leftovers. Just like piano.
Roland made his was elsewhere and when he left, the rabble in the hallways turned back to their bowling. Bells rang.... Prayers. Larry crawled out of his cocoon long enough to read a few passages from Proverbs, while Chester and Ramon carried on a conversation about something hilarious in Spanish. The were giggling like absurd little girl scouts. More bells. Lights-out.
I laid awake, pondering this new revelation.... Formal event, in which decorum required that i request the company of a female.... hm.... Work had made me tired. When i slept i had dark dreams.... I dreamed of a black forest with wolves. I could hear the wolves. I could hear them, but i couldn't see them.
One of my fellow 'cooks' lived on my hall. He and I would strike up conversations at work. Mostly about how ridiculous this all was. Richard Reece was a good foot or so taller than me... with broad features and black hair. His accent smelled like Boston... or at least like it had driven through Boston. I didn't know they kept naming people 'richard' after 1953... but he had said that was his name; and i believed him.
We usually worked the same shift. The one that fell after the lunch rush.... So it was our responsibility to put away left overs and start dinner.
50 Stainless steel trays of leftover meatloaf needed to be re-trayed, covered in plastic wrap and wheeled on a 5 foot tall aluminum cart to the cavernous walk-in refrigerator. (One of 3 room sized refrigerators that averaged about 12 feet by 16- 20 feet.) I would drag my book-bag and my worries into the locker room in the basement, find the smallest uniform i could (being 5'6'' and weighing 120 pounds made that difficult when all the uniforms were designed for males) and leave all my stress and confusion with chord function and dangling modifiers with my book sack, in my locker.
The locker room smelled like sweat, stagnant water, and granulated carpet detergent. Or a combination of each of those. All the students who worked in the kitchens had to come there and suit-up first... I never spoke to anyone in the locker room. Not because I didn't know anyone's name who might have happened to be stowing their books away and putting on a uniform.... it just seemed un-natural to be conversational, or chatty in such a place. To be jovial in a basement room lined with avocado green lockers, and a variety of carpet patches on the cement floor.... a room with a adjacent military-style style showers.... it just seemed vulgar.
The anxiety over academic failure.... even though i had yet to expect failure.... blew over me like a strong, hot, summer wind. Like the wind before a thunder storm. As you can see, regardless of my early social programming, I had become extremely self motivated, and had even attached self- worth to my performance in every arena. Somehow though, there was no wind in the kitchen. The kitchen meant work. If there was anything that i could not fail at..... it was transferring 302 lbs of left-over meatloaf slices into shiny new stainless buffet trays, stretching clear plastic wrap over them, and push-pulling a cart full of trays to the gigantic refrigerator.
Sometimes it was chicken patties. Sometimes it was a vegetable that had been baked to within-an-inch-of-it's-life. Sometimes it was those 6'' little pizzas... but it was always the same process. Richard Reece was usually involved with getting a start on dinner. Which meant that he and the Staff Cooks would be lumbering around the Steam Pots... boiling 20 or so chickens at a time, turning 40 gallons of salty water into macaroni and paste, or punching frozen brussel sprouts out of their cardboard cartons, and into a vat of steaming seasoned stock. What would Julia Childs have said? It would have reduced her to tears. She would have been a broken woman.
At any given moment the Kitchen was populated by 20 plus workers. All clad in their white matching suits and tennis shoes that they wouldn't have minded throwing away. (I think that last sentence contained a dangling-modifier.... but in hind-sight I dont think any of the workers would have minded throwing away their works shoes, or their uniforms.) These twenty sum workers were either busy in the bakery department, having gargantuan machines kneed bread, or working in the basement fork-lifting pallets of macaroni to the elevator, or cooking with the Steam Pots, or even sometimes, in the very darkest corners of the kitchen basements.... i had heard that they butchered cattle. A fact that would be much later confirmed by my discovery of a bovine corpse in a large rubber trash can.
In the midst of all this commerce. In the very center of the kitchens.... there was a space reserved for mostly empty stainless tables... and me. Collect the leftovers. Re-pan the leftovers. Drag foods to the majestic cold room. The whole process was so very repetitious.... so delightfully designed, that there was nothing my mind needed to do here. In the continuity of a physical action, i could allow my thoughts to relax... and the tensions of my mind to evaporate. I used a large white plastic scoop for more liquidic food stuffs... or tongs for others. Maybe it was all the steam, maybe it was the fact that this part of my life was so un-like class or piano... But in the most profound irony, this place of gore and metal and blood, was my own little mecca.
I had a set list of very simple tasks. Most of them including meatloaf... but all the same, the tasks were simple... and no one was grading me on my ability to scoop peas.
My work hours would pass along. Not fast... Not slow really, and soon enough i would trudge down to the little room with all of those forlorn looking lockers and its naked bony showers, and id collect my things.
After stopping and practicing piano for a couple hours, my motivation to practice would fizzle out, and i headed back to my room.
Ramon and Chester were at their usual exploits. Fraternizing with the other troglodytes on the hall... being loud and making what Im sure what would have been considered witty snide remarks about my bookishness.... albeit, they might have only been considered 'witty' in the shanty-town countries of the boys' origin. I was working on a bit of homework when the hall leader pushed through a raucous tumble of boys who passed themselves as adults in some circles. Yes, the dormitory was always like this... and unrelenting drama of post-adolescent hormonal sociopaths... talking, laughing, and breaking into un-explainable wrestling matches.
Josh Roland was our Resident Assistant. Hall Leader. Sheriff of the third-floor west wing. I was his job to prevent action against the Almighty Handbook. He took his obligations seriously... the raucous in the hall was precisely why he was here. After making a group of boys stop bowling in the hall, he stepped in to say hello.
Roland was the picture of former highschool-football star, and by extension was a Handsome Soccer Player. One of 12 or so siblings that looked exactly like him, his father was a devout christian doctor in the vein of Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman.... a father who, i assume did not believe in birth control.
How Roland became both popular, and powerfully situated in The Authority, is probably a novel in and of itself. Broad shoulders. Obvious indention in the chin. Blue eyes and extensive self confidence. I think once or twice he appeared in promotional literature for the school. Glossy photo.... glowing credentials.... etc. etc.
Roland appeared through the dust from the crowd, and immediately engaged me in conversation.
JR: "Hey! You're Josh right?" (slight hair toss, and overtly pensive look.)
Me: "Yup... that's me...." (rubs eyes and offers blank expression...)
JR: "How's it goin' man? What ya sudyin' there?"
Me: "Harmony... its.... great...." (More bland expressions.)
JR: "Cool... is ah, Mr. Flowers still teaching first year a that?"
Me: "Yeah. I like it. He's slow.... easy to keep up with."
Roland at this juncture began making his was through the room taking a look of everyone's things, as if they were relics of a lost civilization. He settled on my alarm clock, which due to the fact that so little space in the room was left for me to claim when i arrived, was over across the room on my dresser. It was amazingly over sized, plain faced clock made out of chrome. Hammer and bells and all.
JR: ''Is this thing real?"
Me: "Do you mean, 'is it a clock?' or 'does it exist?" I quarried.
JR: (chuckles; eye roll) "I mean, does it work..." He plowed on.
Me: "Yes. It functions as it was intended." (Blinks.)
I was beginning to lose faith in establishing intelligent thought flow, outside of the class room. Never the less, I was not the instigator of this conversation, and could think of no way to end it without transgressing polity.
JR: "So who're you taking to artist series? You're a freshman right?"
Me: "Yeah, I am... What's artist series?"
JR: "It's where everyone gets dressed up and goes to a concert in the auditorium.... They throw one every coupla months. You invite a girl and buy her flowers.... ya know, it's kinda formal."
Me: (Blinks) "Oh. I think i remember reading something about that in the calender of events. When is that?"
JR: "It's in a couple weeks. I mean it's ok if you don't take a date.... Not all the freshmen get dates."
Me: (More Blinks) "Do I have to go?"
JR: (Ironic laughter) " Yeah... haha. You have to... but they're pretty cool usually."
Me: (moans... shoulder slump.) "Oh... great."
Whatever Roland had left to say has been deleted from my memory, with a slew of everything else that was un-memorable about him. Artist Series. Yet another challenge had presented itself. A formal event he said? hm.... I thumbed through the calendar of events to discover more about this mystery.
hm. Dates. Hmmmmm. The Freshmen don't usually get dates? Hm....
The concept of required entertainment was confusing... but then, there were so many other requirements here that i couldn't force logic behind that i didn't bother trying to make sense of it. It was something that must be done. Just like study. Just like leftovers. Just like piano.
Roland made his was elsewhere and when he left, the rabble in the hallways turned back to their bowling. Bells rang.... Prayers. Larry crawled out of his cocoon long enough to read a few passages from Proverbs, while Chester and Ramon carried on a conversation about something hilarious in Spanish. The were giggling like absurd little girl scouts. More bells. Lights-out.
I laid awake, pondering this new revelation.... Formal event, in which decorum required that i request the company of a female.... hm.... Work had made me tired. When i slept i had dark dreams.... I dreamed of a black forest with wolves. I could hear the wolves. I could hear them, but i couldn't see them.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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.
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
Of course i wanted to cook!
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.
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.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Collusion: Part II & 1/2
Ghandi has something to say about society. Regardless of your thoughts on popular culture, without a doubt you are swayed by it and your involvement in it sways others. We make the world that we live in.... and the inverse is more true than any of us likes to admit. Even if we are all little islands, the waters of social interaction flow all around us... bring in touring concepts... shape the landscape of our lives; and despite our ideas about originality and choice, force mutation after mutation.
I say all of this by way of introduction back into 'collusion'. The difference in my schedule from before my time here, and now was striking. I was determined to do well. I was determined to earn my keep. From the morning of my first arrival my life began to be more and more regulated. There was a bell in the hall way that woke me up at the same time every morning; and that same bell dictated that i should turn off my lamp at night. click. click. Duplicates of that same bell could be found in hallways all around campus. Ring. Go to bed. Ring. Wake up. Ring eat. Ring. Pray.
Those self same bells weren't just bossing me around. They were the levies... and the metronomes of everyone on campus. Tiny dictators that affected all aspects of the micro society, from Joe Political Science, all the way to The President Himself.
Oppressed by it? Not at all. I was in love with the concept.
I often think how lucky i was to have my first toe holds into social experience happen here. Not because i think it did such an amazing job of preparing me for the future... rather because the machinations of this particular society were so specific and so radically different from society as usual that the experience would be akin to discovering a lost protestant tribe deep in the heart of middle america.
How does one go about describing a micro society? I think I need to...in order to have some bones to have the flesh of this narrative hang on. I will pretend that im you... and that i am discovering this lost tribe first off. Ive already introduced you to the differing levels of the Cast system. Lets talk dress code.
Almighty Handbook is published once a year by University Press. (The Press is a financial cash cow for BJU. They use it to publish all the books for every christian school on the eastern seaboard, the mid-west... parts of Hawaii and beyond. It's housed in one of the largest buildings on campus.) As i said before, Almighty Handbook dictates all aspects of student life. All aspects. And its all-seeing eyes do not miss dress code. I thought i was going to have to go through the trouble of remembering all of it and regurgitating for this story. Thankfully not. It can be easily accessed via the internet. Yessssss.
What you are about to read is real.
Go ahead! Click on it!
I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another. Mohandas GhandiFascinating, isn't it? I became aware of this all too clearly when I started school at BJU. As a reader you are likely questioning the viability of this school as a broad representation of the rest of north american society.... and those thoughts are just. Warranted even. Even if the only thing you know about BJU is what you can find on wikipedia.... you may well be aware that this place has its own anthropological zip code. Everyone that is touched by it is left with at least some of the same finger marks.
I say all of this by way of introduction back into 'collusion'. The difference in my schedule from before my time here, and now was striking. I was determined to do well. I was determined to earn my keep. From the morning of my first arrival my life began to be more and more regulated. There was a bell in the hall way that woke me up at the same time every morning; and that same bell dictated that i should turn off my lamp at night. click. click. Duplicates of that same bell could be found in hallways all around campus. Ring. Go to bed. Ring. Wake up. Ring eat. Ring. Pray.
Those self same bells weren't just bossing me around. They were the levies... and the metronomes of everyone on campus. Tiny dictators that affected all aspects of the micro society, from Joe Political Science, all the way to The President Himself.
Oppressed by it? Not at all. I was in love with the concept.
I often think how lucky i was to have my first toe holds into social experience happen here. Not because i think it did such an amazing job of preparing me for the future... rather because the machinations of this particular society were so specific and so radically different from society as usual that the experience would be akin to discovering a lost protestant tribe deep in the heart of middle america.
How does one go about describing a micro society? I think I need to...in order to have some bones to have the flesh of this narrative hang on. I will pretend that im you... and that i am discovering this lost tribe first off. Ive already introduced you to the differing levels of the Cast system. Lets talk dress code.
Almighty Handbook is published once a year by University Press. (The Press is a financial cash cow for BJU. They use it to publish all the books for every christian school on the eastern seaboard, the mid-west... parts of Hawaii and beyond. It's housed in one of the largest buildings on campus.) As i said before, Almighty Handbook dictates all aspects of student life. All aspects. And its all-seeing eyes do not miss dress code. I thought i was going to have to go through the trouble of remembering all of it and regurgitating for this story. Thankfully not. It can be easily accessed via the internet. Yessssss.
What you are about to read is real.
Go ahead! Click on it!
Dress Code for Men
| Alright. I know what you're thinking. First that it's the kind of side-splitting funny that just has to be true. And you're right! But cultivating and controlling the impulses of an age demographic that is characterized by experimentation and self-expression is just one aspect of this college experience. It's often a point of contention as you might expect. This one chapter of Almighty Handbook is like all of its others... and is driven by a type of world view that worships mystic Hebrew god.... and holds one book in higher regard than even Almighty Handbook. His Book. All of that to give you colors to paint with. How else could i describe the tribe? A hive. Those first weeks of school were as busy as if you had kicked an ant hill. Everyone busy about his own business. Work. Class. Each ant was someone new to meet. New connections to forge... and quickly i was learning that within the confines of the rules set down by Almighty Handbook... there were other powerful ways in which the ants could express themselves. A skirt was an inch too high. A button was loose. One smells like Abercrombie. One smells like Hollister. The smallest of indication that they had decided where to place themselves in the Cast; that they decided whom and what they would obey. Fascinating. All of it. Fascinating. I would soon learn that success academically would be decided by how well i could obey Almighty Handbook.... but social success would be determined by how easily i broke its laws with out alerting the attention of the Authority. The Authority. You must realize that the laws of the bells and Almighty Handbook are completely useless, unless you have a regulatory system in place to enforce such laws. The Authority will be discussed later. There is turkey to be eaten. There is family to attend to. Happy Thanksgiving. | |||||||||||||
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