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.  

Collusion: Part XXII

Aren't people fascinating? They're all these complex bi-peds (most of them) with need and want and varying degrees of intellect. Some of them are content with food and shelter. Some of them have much more complex needs. Social approval... financial success... a basement full of corpses covered in lime.... Ya just never know with people.

It was a Sunday at school. Sundays were usually the most scheduled day of the week. Required Morning Service to attend, Required Society Sunday School before that... Required Vespers in the afternoon.... You could try to squeeze in some homework somewhere in the afternoon. Snatch some food from somewhere and then pick arbitrarily from one of the seven hundred options for evening churches to attend on Sunday nights in Greenville. Vespers, in case you're wondering was a planned religiously themed program that included drama and music, and usually centered on one main theme. Adultery. Lust. Forgiveness. Dedication of one's life to a higher purpose... such as becoming a missionary to Bolivia. Etc. Etc.

On this weekend I had done my best to noodle about in the city, not having a car. I thought it was important to get a feel for the people who lived outside the walls of my confines.... and perhaps the places where they spent their lives. As I was soon to discover, however, my native talents do not include walking, and so by 'exploring the city' I mean that I wandered the streets around school looking like the victim of a natural disaster. Wide eyed at the simple processes of crossing the street at a light and fascinated by homeless people.

I had managed to find my way to an Asian food store. You know the kind where you can buy bulk Asian foods for the restaurant that your Philippine family owns? I wandered into the store beset with the smells of quasi-fresh fish, Mongolian vegetables, and small pastries shaped like domesticated animals. I can't remember what the place was called, as I had spent all of my energy walking to the store, and thus was un-able to form new memories. My weariness did not however, prevent me from purchasing eight pounds of rice, a very large bag of fortune cookies and a tin can full of quail eggs. Quail eggs I reasoned would be an interesting and tasty alternative to the products of their more well known cousins... chickens. I had no needs for these food-stuffs.... but this was one of those obvious facts that like so many other things at the time, was lost on me.

So on this Sunday.... this fateful Sunday, I decided after morning service requirement that I would make a delicious stew out of rice, new onions, and quail eggs. I would cook these ingredients together in a small Crock-Pot(TM) and reveal the product to my roomates. They seemed to have a never ending need for sustenance, and it was part of my plan was to win their affection by providing them with a curious, yet delicious evening meal. I left the mixture cooking all afternoon without supervision... assuming of course that anything you cook in a Crock-Pot(TM) should require this sort of cooking method.

Five hours later when I returned from evening service.... I was greeted on the first floor by the most amazing smell of my life. It smelled like a mortuary.... and onions.... and pan fried human excrement. High jinx ensued. The roomates and I experienced much laughter as we poked and prodded at the cement like mixture in the Crock-Pot(TM).... and then we scraped together what we could of the mixture... poured it into two shopping bags.... and then threw it under my hall leaders desk.

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.

Collusion: Part XX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collusion: Part XIX

What is beauty... exactly? No... seriously. Think about it. I don't mean a definition. What is it to you? Is it balance? Is it symmetry? Is it perfect? Is it that exotic balance between right and wrong? Maybe not any of these things. Not exactly anyway. It's not perfectly constructed personal grooming. Nor is it the product of rampant orthodontia is this country. Beauty is perception. It's our believing, however foolishly, that something is perfect. Balanced. Innately circumspect.

Year two started, and my brother requested to room with me. It was fine... despite his poor sanitary habits, I had grown used to his idiosyncrasies; seeing as we had shared a room for the better part of 2 decades. Through some odd twist of karmic fate, Josh Roland was one of our room-mates. I could hardly wait for the enlightening conversations that might await. This semester was going to be like a season of Dynasty... without the creepy long nails and big hair.

Classes and schedule got set without a hitch and I threw myself back into the work. I was checking performance class times on the bulletin board in the main hall of the Fine Arts Building after chapel on a Tuesday... when someone stomped up behind me smelling like a Bath and Body Works. A heavy wave of Japanese Cherry Blossom rolled into my sinus passages... storming the beach like weather hardened Marines. Desert Storm. First strike. I don't discriminate against ladies who like to wear perfume... but to be frank, there's no reason to drink it for breakfast with your morning coffee. Almost immediately my sinuses clamped shut in defense of the invader.

"Josh Medlin!" yelled a raspy little girls voice behind me. I turned around to a familiar cow eyed round face. Shoulder length black brown hair that was shiny enough to shift around the salty white gray light from the industrial strip lighting in the hall way. A quick survey showed a floral print button down top with frills and a stocky little mandarin collar. Grey pencil skirt and ice pick black patten leather stilettos. Cleavage. Cleavage. Cleavage. This girl is what any self-respecting rapper would call 'thick.' Big old faux alligator skin shoulder bag held most of the library and a laptop.
"When's the next time you play in perf class?" She asked... tossing her hair back in a easy little flick.
What is this girls name? Crap. I've seen her all over the place prancing around like she invented music. We were in at least three classes together. All of which I was sure she was acing.
"Ahhhh. October? Apparently?" I answered... looking for her name on something. Anything. Nothing. I forget this isn't like kindergarten.
"Oh really!?... that's a long time! I've been dying to hear you play something!! Like... anything! What are you working on?" This girl was hard core.
"Oh.... ah. You know. Bach. Some stuff from the Well Tempered Clavier. Tom's wanting me to do a concerto, but I'm not so sold on the idea just yet. Ive got Mozart and Beethoven sonatas in the works... and Ive recently gotten really interested in Edward McDowell. The Sea Pieces, and the fireside tales. Do you know the works?"
"McDowell? Oh! I did his concerto in high-school! Totally love!" She pranced around me and traced down the list of performances and students' names until she found the two dates she was performing. Melodie Cappoccia. A musician named Melodie. Cute.
"How do you say your last name?" I queried... Looking for other topics.
"Oh! Yeah everyone always asks me that! Ha Ha! It's CAP....OH.. CHA! It's Italian..."
Already I was convinced that this amount of vivacity was un-natural.... and that I should begin to inquire who her dealer was, and if he was accepting new clients.
"We should totally hang out sometime! What's your schedule look like? Where do you work?"
I would discover she was always like this. Militant. Aggressively friendly.
"Well... Im a cook. Ya know, in the dinning common." Eye roll. "And I dunno... Im free for lunch today.
"What a coincidence!So! Am! I! I used to work in the dinning common. All the little academy kids who work there had the biggest crush on me." She exclaimed, winking.
She rummaged through her bag and pulled out an over-sized compact and did a little touch up.
"Wanna go now? I've got fourty-five minutes or so until I accompany?"
"Well I... thought I was just gonna skip lunch and practice or something."
"Oh come on! I won't bite! (hair toss... another wave of Japanese Cherry Blossom.)
"Ok.... sure..."

We walked briskly to lunch. To my surprise I found her a bit charming. After you get past the perfume and the mascara.... She was pretty ok. She kept telling me stories about how very 'Italian' everyone in her family was. How she had perfect pitch, how she was trying to lose weight. I really didn't know what it meant to be 'very Italian.' Did she have mafia ties? Was her family life like watching Everybody Loves Raymond? She chatted on and on...

During lunch I noticed a text I had missed. Christine.
CD{R U Free for lunch?}
hm.... this could get interesting.
ME{I found someone to tag along with!}
CD{Oh?}
ME{Yeah. This chick named Melodie... ya know her?}
CD{Oh. Oh yes. I know who she is. She smells like Bath n Body Wrks?}
ME{Yes! And she has enormous boobs!}
Christine and I talked about everything. And everyone... No one was safe from us.

"Is something wrong?" Melodie asked, salting a single pea.
"Oh. Oh no.... Just chatting with my girlfriend."
"OH! Ha!" Blank big eyed stare.

CD{Uh. I hate that girl.}
ME{I dunno... she seems nice enough.}
CD{Nice enough? No one can be that happy all the time.}
CD{Oh.. and she's a skank.}
ME{How do you know that?}
CD{Ill tell you at dinner. Deal?}
ME{KK.}

We finished lunch and said our 'see ya laters.' Why the heck was up with Christine? It was just lunch. Geez. Whatever. Id find out at dinner. Work in fifteen minutes.

Collusion: Part XVIII

Hours and hours of painting. Days of it. Another day, another trip to Columbia. Another Mountain Dew, and another pack of miniature chocolate donuts. Columbia is a dirty industrial city that has stretched and grown faster than the city planners had allowed for. Its state house is surrounded by tall hundred year old black palmetto trees. They look like spiny coconut trees and give the old downtown area the appeal of an old-south inspired dime novel. In the middle of all that nostalgia is the city library. A big gray cinder block looking building all pieced together with enormous slabs of mirrored glass. The other buildings in the city are a similarly ill patched together assortment of modern architecture, antebellum estates, and suburbs filled with cookie cutter houses made out of red and brown brick that seemed so perfectly adorable to baby boomers. I always felt like a tourist on these painting expeditions. The kind of cheap tourist that doesn't buy key chains or post cards.... but perhaps the occasional Zero bar and a diet Pepsi.

At the end of the work day I never wanted anything but to return home and shower gobs of paint spatter off and practice piano. There was plenty of pressure to return to school in the fall with a good head start on my new fall repertoire line up. And I would practice too... I just never felt quite satisfied with what I was accomplishing on a daily basis. It's difficult to work in sweltering heat every day and then force new muscle memory from a weary cerebellum. But I would do what I could. If dandelions can grow through cracks in sidewalks, then I could most certainly memorize a Mozart sonata. Tom Grimble and everyone else who had anything to say on the matter had made it painfully clear to me that sophomore year would be the year that would decide if I could stay a piano performance major. Sophomore Check was the platform that I would pass in order to continue study in my major. I imagined that it would take place in a very dark room. Black walls, black ceilings, one spot light... the judges draped in black.... hoods and pale faces and you probably wouldn't be able to see their eyes. If my performance pleased the gods, then they would allow my continued study. If not... they would require that I bring forward my academic torch and extinguish it. That or if i met disapproval they would perhaps begin a chant of sorts and then bash in my skull with a conch shell.
I spent my free time taking all the pains necessary to memorize my Bach. A prelude and fugue that i was working on. Layers of melodic lines. Delicately sewn together. Twisting and undulating. Dancing around and behind one another. Doing their routine with formality, sophistication and old-world gracefulness. Sometimes on the drive to Columbia I would trace out the patterns of the music on my thy... hearing the expected corresponding sounds in my head all the while. 

Every night before falling off to sleep I would pray my little prayer.
"God, make me stronger and faster. Make me sin less and make me sharp like a knife. Help me whittle away at myself until there's nothing left that isn't perfect."

The rest of the summer melted away like ice-cream on tarmac. I thought how different times where now than they had been.
I was eleven and John was nine. Beth was just seven or so. We would spend those summer days, not working and saving... but we had built little kingdoms in the woods behind our house. We would rake away the pine-straw and thick leaf layer that blanketed the floor of the woods. All the cast away leaves from seasons past. Hundreds of yards of little trails that snaked away into the wood, far away from our house. There were seven or eight acres and we took advantage of each one. And we would find twine, and lash together fallen limbs... so heavy that it sometimes took the both of us to lift and tie it off to a standing tree. We made little wigwams. We raked away the leaf floors of our forest homes. We almost never wore shoes. We would spend hours and hours gathering sour weeds from a nearby field and bundling them together with the twine. Hanging each small parcel upside down from the branched roof of our imaginary homes. We would develop pretend personalities.We would gather ripe scuppernogs and save them for the impending winter. Or the hard under-ripe green ones... we would gather and sling-shot them at one another... or pelt them at waring tribes of saber-tooth tigers that had wandered into our territory to eat our livestock and pillage our stores of weeds. You must be very careful not to attack a tiger without help. At least take Mini along. She was our fat old golden lab... and she was not afraid of tigers in the least. We grew up with the woods all around us... we all ran fast and climbed high, high up into the arms of the holly trees, who's smooth brown skin looked just like ours.

Later as we grew into teenagers.... our fantasy play time evolved. It became more violent and less forgiving. We replaced our wigwams with bunkers built strong and solid out of wood scavenged from the saw mill. And in place of the spears we had fashioned to fend off raiders from opposition tribes, we bought slick black semi-automatic paintball guns, with load hoppers that held enough ammo to last you through an hour of heavy fire. There were bunkers here and there dotted in the woods and two in the grassy field in front of the house. Three or four friends of equal age to us would come over and we'd split into teams. Objects of the game play changed. At times the objective might be to capture a flag from the opposing team. John and I were nearly never on the same team. The other kids considered us equivalent marksmen and it would be more than a little un-fair. Beth played sometimes.... but I'm sure it had a lot more to do with romance and the neighbor boys then winning a violent game of 'who's the alpha male?'. My Dad played along too... being short and round he found shelter mostly at ground-level or in one of the bunkers. Dad was a crack shot though and could light a match with a shot from 50 yards. I was deeply emotionally invested in these games and had secretly loosened the CO2 valve on my gun. This increased my range of fire by about 30 yards and left ugly bruises on my fallen opponents. During game play I would pull out a tiny octagonal wrench and quickly adjust gas pressure from "ok, i'm hit." to "I blacked out and my spleen is leaking." The other kids hated me for this, but I always managed to pull out the tiny wrench and re-adjust the pressure back to something a little more normal, so that I couldn't be accused of un-ethical game play. During these games, I would often be named a team captain and be responsible for organizing a defensive strategy. Poor marksmen and short or fat kids would remain close to base to pick their noses and over heat in all the armored clothing they were wearing. Lean fast running kids would run quickly well outside of the legally decided limits of decided game play and creep stealthily behind the enemy base. The fact that this strategy was not immediately obvious to the other members of my team was exquisitely painful, and I couldn't help but morn the fact that the rest of my team mates were clearly cave dwellers. Didn't anyone ever watch Alias? You know... where Sidney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) suits up in black leather and dies her hair bubble-gum pink in some tragic public restroom to avenge a fallen comrade who was gunned down on a mission in Uruguay? Christ! What a woman! .... None of my team mates had the drive to discover the accepted uses for a television.

I was usually responsible for these long winded runs across the field of play.... I would dart panther-like behind large trees. Bunker to bunker. On this day my brother was the opposing team leader and was responsible for slaughtering everyone else on my team except me. It was nearly a hung game seeing as he and I were the only players left. I was the last to stay close to the bunker where our flag was hidden. It was close to dusk and I was hiding behind a very large felled tree. I was waiting for John's approach. I would let him get within 10 feet of my hiding place and then easily snipe him. I listened intently and slowed my breaths so that I could be absolutely silent. He walked with purpose and without fear. He assumed that I would be using my limited resources to search for the opposing flag, and followed a little ATV trail directly towards me. Closer. A little closer. Come on.... He stopped for a second... fifteen feet from me and looked around. Perhaps sensing impending danger. I silently propped my gun on the tree... put my brother in my cross hairs and fired. (TWUP!) A neon green ball rocketed out the barrel of my gun and plastered across John's protective visor...

"AAAAH!" he yelled surprised.... and shot back at my tree in retaliation.
"You can't shoot people at point blank range! You're an idiot!" He screamed at me enraged. "You're gonna hurt some body!! What's wrong with you?"
I packed up my things and walked emotionless back to the house.
"Whatever. You lost." I said as I walked past him.

Collusion: Part XVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collusion: Part 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...

"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.

Collusion: Part XI

6 or 7 thousand of us students and faculty piled row upon row in Founders Memorial Amphitorium. 'Amphitorium' is a made up word...Perhaps it was invented in an attempt to convey the idea that this was a building like no other. I know not. Either was its what the mammoth building is called. Its roughly 6 stories high and wide enough that it would take you 6 minutes to walk from one end to the other at a normal pace. There are hundreds of rows of rainbow colored fold down theater-style seats that follow a gradual decline in the floor towards a grand stage. A balcony seats about two thousand more. I've been in the building at night before... when the lights were out and no one else was there. The space can give you the feeling of being in the largest cave imaginable. One could very easily play baseball here and not feel like they were lacking space.
The building was used every day for something or another. At eleven a.m., Monday through Thursday everyone is required to attend 'chapel' here. All students report here from the far reaches of campus, which may require a bit of running or brisk walking to get there in time. You must be in your seat at precisely 11 a.m.. If you're late you will be given demerits.

The service begins and a chorus master walks onto the stage. He instructs the mass of students to find one hymn or another in the blue hymnals that can be found in little brown wooden cubbies on the back of each seat. The gathering raises quite a lot of sound, filling the august space with a rich albeit somber music. Precisely we praise mystic hebrew god. In less clinical metrics... all together. After two hymns another speaker emerges from the row of ancients that find their seats lining the back of the stage. (Theses are all the highest member of the authority... many of them of a great age.) He would make a few remarks on the day and the lead us in chanting the university creed. A monologue that all first years had to memorize within the first three weeks at school. Together we stood and recited.

"I believe in the inspiration of the bible. both the old and the new testaments. the creation of man by the direct act of god. the incarnation and virgin birth of our lord and savior jesus christ. his identification as the son of god. his vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind by the shedding of his blood on the cross. the resurrection of his body from the tomb. his power to save men from sin. the new birth through the regeneration by the holy spirit. and the gift of god, which is eternal life."

The chant had become such an integral part of campus culture that it was often spoken in a hollow and conviction-less tone. No matter. Conviction or not... when seven thousand people chant something everyday... it has a tendency to stamp itself into your mind. It becomes the sediment and silt of your thoughts.

The day that we were all set to be released for Christmas break there was one of these such services. We sang Christmas tunes and chanted our chant. And Dr. Bob Jones III took the stage to wish us well and safe travels to our homes. And that was that. Semester over. All my exams had gone well.
I said my goodbyes to my little group of friends and of course thought the better of saying anything at all to my brown skinned room-mates. It's such a burden being Caucasian.  

Mom and dad picked me up at the appointed hour. All my bags and things that i was taking home were waiting expectantly in a neat little pile on the sidewalk in front of my dormitory. The two hour drive home was as quiet as a funeral. My brother and sister had tagged along. Mom and Dad offered questions about how I was and how my final test scores had gone. I was at best non-committal about it all. I would not complain about how things had been. This was a choice that i had made. I would present the bucolic ideal of my introduction to college as best i could. I began a collusion of sorts with my family. That is what this story is about after all; isnt it? I would only let them see what they needed to see. Besides... it would be nice to put everything away and just have a nice Christmas. I sat in the back seat of the suburban and stared out the window as the city retracted and trees and fields began to fill up the space left by buildings and parking lots.

That first Christmas was so welcome. It was nice to take a look at my family dynamic in comparison to the building full of testosterone driven repressed cave dwellers that i had been living with. This Christmas was a new one. A different one. I savored the relics of my childhood and yes even mourned their loss.

I baked cookies and wrapped the gifts that I had saved and bought for my parents, brother and sister. My carefully controlled existence had begun to reveal itself to be far from my ability to govern. So that Christmas i learned perhaps the most valuable of life lessons... that we are but the students of life's changes. That adaptation is to be considered our greatest strength. That true godliness could be found in the simplest of acts of kindness, one person to another.

Three weeks of yule therapy had got me into a better state of mind. I had plans for these who opposed me at school and they would suffer the consequences of standing in my way. My optimism was no where near weakened. I would return to the kitchen, and the piano, and my books.

My sister and i were very close then and many nights during the break we would spend out in the night time chatting on the trampoline... Talking about everything. It was nice to know that some bonds stayed strong no matter what... and would never need mending.

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.

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.

Collusion: Part V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collusion: Part IV

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

Josh Medlin

"Cook"

Dinning Common Staff

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

 Of course i wanted to cook! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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