Collusion: Part XXVII

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. What a curious phrase. Are we to suspect that all Romans behave in roughly the same manner? Are we to emulate these toga wearing hive- minds only when we can amass the small fortune which it now requires to make the pilgrimage to Rome? Is it meant to suggest that what happens in Rome, like things that happen in Las Vegas, stay in Rome? I can't be certain. I do not know the origin of the phrase. But like most things that become cliche phraseology, I am certain that there is some sliver of wisdom down deep in its origins... and that should we wander down the old paths to Rome, we would surely find the thing that inspired such a phrase and we would doubtless agree with the wisdom at its root.

And why do I mention? Well you see. In a sense, Bob Jones is... as I had come to see it, Rome. With architecture no less idiomatic and a populace no less united. I came to see as well that I, like Caesar... in forging a relationship with X, had made new and dangerous enemies in the Senate... and soon by degrees they would join and make a calculated effort to end me. The floor of the Senate however would look remarkably like the Dean of Men's office, and the little daggers that my former friends the Senate would make use of... were short but no less quick little tongues. Sharp. Wet with truth... with one simple desire. My blood. Et tu Jesus? Et tu? 

As that small little coven of my friends washed frenetically through their own irrelevant schedules summer was at the front of everyone's mind. Expulsion was happening at a rate that might have alarmed me had I not experienced it's reality in the years past. Like pop corn that you cook on the stove... one might draw a correlation between the ambient heat of the burning season change and a witless students demise.
I couldn't make it to a recital. I didn't really have time to meet them for lunch. I couldn't have been less interested in their final project for Interior Design 101... Congratulations, you have successfully furnished a dolls house. Certainly this means you were born to win? I could feel it in the looks that I got. Those friends that I was unwittingly making into the ghouls from an espionage film. As I think on it though, I wasn't making them into anything at all. My decisions were simply the catalyst... the one true chemical, the acid that would burn away the charming tarnish of their exteriors and leave them bright and shining... and... a vulgar sort of ugly.

Melodie was taking a class with me called "Story Telling," the main goal of which I think was for her to eventually ensnare me firmly in the vice like grip of the lips of her vagina. A concept which had all the appeal of being thrown down a flight of steps. We spent hours non the less, in a large conference room high up on the third floor of the Gustafson Fine Arts Center. The room looked like the kind of place where you might be called in to do a presentation on global warming or some other mind numbing pig shit.

MC: "I know, but do you think my interpretation of the witches voice might be a little too... scratchy?"
ME: ... I was responding to a text from X and could hardly remember what story she was referencing. Oh.. right Hansel and Gretel. "Uh... well. I thought it was fairly accurate. I mean... I was really convinced that you sounded like a witch." M took this as a compliment, and I'm afraid did not get the sense that I could have been remotely back handed.
MC: "The only thing is... I don't want to go hoarse. If I talk like that for too long.... Maybe I just need to bring a bottle of water to class." She chewed the end of a ball point... distressed.
I've been rather straight forward in my descriptions of Melodie, in the interest of honesty. To be fair, she was unflappably kind to me and I had begun to think about our little practice times as sort of vacation. Up here in the conference room I was mercifully free from prying questions and suspicious member of the Senate. Namely, Ami Jasperson, Eric Inafuku, Christine Dodd, Raymond Swope, Louretta and David Landon... and arguably Tim Johnson. These people are as real as oxygen, and at the time seemed just as dangerous as trying to live without it.

MC: "Joshie! Im just nervous about all of this! I mean, I can talk... you know that! (laughing) But I want to really move people... ya know?"
ME: "You are moving though... Like, I think in a sense.... the goal should be to disappear... and let the story tell itself... right?"
MC: She gave momentary thought to this and then gushed... "You're so right Joshie. I hadn't even thought about it like that."

The conversation bore on... and I was looking forward to getting back to my room and jogging to the Field House for a run on the rubber track up stairs there. Mel started putting away her note books and binders into her big snake skin bag. I noticed she wasn't chitting away like she usually was. I asked her what was on her mind...
She pranced on those ubiquitous black stilettos of hers over to the head of the long dark wood table at the center of the room and firmly gripped the edge of the table as if to brace herself.
She ran her nails through her shiny long hair and tossed it back looking me dead in the eye.
MC: "Well, you know joshie... how you're really my best friend in the whole world. I mean we spend pretty much a lot of time together every day. There's no one that I've been quite so fond of in a while."
ME: "Well I feel the same about you Melly..." I hadn't a clue where she was going...
MC: "Well... seeing that you're not dating anymore... ya know and Im glad about that. That silly Christine was just no good for you..." She was smiling with just a hint of malice...
ME: "Well... that's true..."
MC: "I was just.... I think that there's something between us... Ya know?"
ME: ".... .... (blink) like... the table?"
She laughed at this. Rather cloyingly.
ME: "I guess I don't really see what you mean..."
MC: "There's something really sweet about you! And you're so clever and funny... I've started to have a crush on you... (hair toss) and... I just know you feel it to!"
ME: "I... I. (I was at a loss) I really guess I don't feel the same way. I am... Flattered, that you could feel that way about me, and honored even... but I don't think I can return the sentiment."

There was a silence, and I felt intuitively that I had somehow wounded her. errrrr. uh.

MC: "You're sure... there's like... nothing there? Nothing at all?"
ME: "Yeah... Im sorry... but yeah."

I left the room without ceremony. Congratulations Medlin. Look what you've done. Yet another log on the fire. Yet another sharp knife. At least, I thought as I started my run, when you're on the floor bleeding out... you'll simply have to roll your head to the side to see your own blood pooling ironically around the heels of her gorgeous shoes. 

Addendum

I have a tiger in my chest, 

It's cage was spun from silk.

Woven daily, and precise,

It purrs, I feed it milk.

The cage that I am weaving,

Keeps the tiger hidden deep.

But at night his playground- jungle,

Is my mind while I sleep.

This monster of my keeping,

Is strong and swift and white, 

He was not meant for taming, 

but for murder in the night. 

With new rope I hide em daily, 

sew him out of sight and thought, 

The isolation keeps me living, 

but the peace is labor bought. 

I found him just a kitten, 

I took him to my house to play, 

But now, he's grown to prowl and hunt,

And break and kill his prey.

I have a tiger in my chest, 

containment, lust and lies.

So mend the fence, and lock the cage,

and if he's loose, we die.

Untitled.

Five hours a day,

That's the way,

A week to lift the spirit,

Sit in Green or Red or Blue, 

That gum, you must not chew it.

This way that, 

Don't wear a hat,

Please "Get in the building."

Sing with the rest, 

and you'll be blessed,

Your morals need the gilding. 

Please, please come in, 

and let's be friends, 

Fear God. Give us your money.

And laugh and laugh at all our jokes,

Though they're not all that funny.

Fundraiser for the Christian right...

Loan us your bleedin' pennies.

It's a spectacle of majesty, 

Are not our splendors many?

Save your lofty rhetoric,

I'll wait until you live it, 

The ushers reek of razor-speak,

Push and demand and pivot.

Believe! Believe! and 

Follow us to metal euthanasia!

No thanks....

I'm good.

I'll see ya.

Collusion: Part XVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collusion: Part XV

Doubtless you readers might find the preceding happenings a bit difficult to believe. Such a structured environment must be designed to protect its members, no? So I had thought too. I thought here i would have been safe. I would be safe from drunken frat parties. I thought I'd be safe from being labeled anything but a christian. I thought it would be a place for me to grow and experience a sort of society, without having to worry about hazing, or alcohol poisoning, or roofies. Or perhaps being dragged out of my bed in the middle night and lynched for looking queer. Alas. It was not so to be. I say this all with a sort of wry smile on my face... hind sight is a bit less dire.

The great thing about almost bashing someones head in with an oak chair, is that in societies which still operate by rule of the dominant male, (see last 14 chapters) the more a man such as myself can assert physical dominance over the others, the less likely he is to be maligned by surrounding males who are also competing for dominance. Tale as old as time and all that. For a while the bullying stopped. I had learned enough spanish from my classes that I could fire back slurs at the room-mates mothers... calling them prostitutes; and not the classy kind either. Antonio Banderas wouldn't have approved of this tactic, but Antonio was busy filming 'Zorro' with Catherine Zeta Jones.

Control. Always control. I would fight to maintain it. I had divided my life into cubicles like an office space. Piano was in one, Room-mates in another. Running in one, Classes in another. My friends had a space of about four cubicles; one of the largest rooms... but i still wouldn't let them see what was happening in all the others. Everyone hated it here, but I didn't want them to know that I was seriously considering homicide as a legitimate solution to some of my problems. I would check the status of activities in each of my cubicles, and take the positive activity, and weigh it against the things that weren't going so well. Its part of how I managed. I worked hard at my studies. I would even call my Mom and ask for her help in studying something. E-mailing her a copy of a list of terms that I would need to define. I was one way of trying to stay in touch with the family. I would walk back and forth in front of my dorm talking and talking, papers in my hand or reciting a speech. I think my mom liked those long conversations... I had hoped that those phone calls would make here feel less like an era hand ended; even though it had.

Ramon Nieves would spend roughly forty minutes each morning sculpting his very short very black hair into a desired shape. I was unable to comprehend the amount of pride that must be at the back of this practice. I reasoned that no amount of hair gel would change his race, or make him less of an asshole. Either way I refused to give input. I suppose if your hair is roughly the texture of burlap, then your styling options are quite limited. Ramon was curiously vain and most of our conversations consisted of him regaling me with romanticized stories of his academic triumphs and amorous conquests. I supposed that this must have been some sort of attempt on his part to compensate for the fact that he was nearly 5 feet and 2 inches tall... and perhaps also that 60% of the words I used were beyond the scope of his understanding of the English language.

One evenings conversation was particularly revealing of my relationship with him. He stood at the sink preening in front of the mirror as I read an engaging chapter out of my Harmony text book lounging on my bunk. He pulled out a couple of outfit options from one of the three closets he had spread his expansive wardrobe out in.... to get my opinion on them.

ME: "Where are you going? Whats all the fuss about?" I could hardly have been begged to be interested.
RAMON: "Oy, my societies dating outing. Mayn I'm going wid dis girl.... ah Chelsea I think? What do you dink about dis?" He displayed some garishly colored button-down. Latinos are partial to button-downs. Particularly silk button-downs.
ME: "ummmm. Maybe you could mix it with dark jeans i guess. But don't wear the white shoes. It's too much. Especially if you're going to be playing paint-ball."
RAMON: "Oh yeah right! You're good at this mayn..... Brown belt, or the black one?"
ME: "El negro. Es mas simplé." I had taken to assuring the other members of the room that I was learning Spanish faster than they could hope to learn English.

Ramon puttered around for a few more minutes and sprayed himself down with the most god-awful cologne. You know the kind that leaves a dense cloud of musk after? The kind that leaves you licking the roof of you mouth because of the alcohol at the back of your throat. Ramon left in a hustle, more or less content with the way he looked.

I was feeling particularly wicked. I slid off my bunk and marked and closed my Harmony text. Vanity is punishable I thought.... and I'd nothing better to do. I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a liter of hydrogen peroxide. I uncapped the bottle and poured about a half of a cup of the magical bleaching liquid into Ramon's bottle of hair gel... then gave the hair gel bottle a shake to incorporate my mischief. Shake shake shake..... gurgle. plop. I placed the hair gel bottle precisely on the shelf as Ramon had left it, and went back to reading my homework.

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 IX

 First semester barreled on. Time is contagious. In the first few months at school i had begun to re-tool myself. Each new day had been scheduled and designed by people who sat in desks... People of devotion. Wholesome men and women who had given their lives to follow a beautiful collection of rules designed to save the masses. Rules that were meant to preserve order. Truth. Beauty. Chastity. It was the perfect place for me to be. I longed to control myself.

Through years and years of teachings as a child my parents had taught me that the heart was unruly. A wickedness above all things and not to be trusted. I remember fondly that always was my instruction taken directly from the hebrew Bible. My thoughts wander back to an every day scene from those days.

Me, my brother and sister sat around the breakfast table. Mom would put the finishing touches on scrambled eggs and bacon... toast. After we had prayed over the food, and eaten Dad would turn to a passage in the 1st John. He read about wisdom, justice, and lust.

For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

What is lust i thought? I pushed the last of the scrambled eggs around on my plate. Lust seemed like a word filled with dark foreboding. It was the dark messenger. The bringer of death and destruction. As a child i hadn't remembered feeling anything quite so powerful as what lust must be like. I imagined that it must be alot like the feeling of falling from a great height. I was afraid of falling. 

I thought of these things as i waited outside an office on the second floor of the fine arts building. The hall stretched from one end of the building to another and was lined with gray textured wallpaper, and a low nap gray carpet. I fiddled with my book sack and waited on one of the wooden benches that were placed up against the walls here and there for just the purpose that I gave it now. Tom Grimble. My piano teacher. His name was cut into black plastic with white lettering.... with a little cork board by his door.
The door swung open and the previous lessons student walked out. Thankyou! see you next week!
Ah. Here we go.

Tom Grimble is a plump man. My height and very fond of wearing navy blue blazers and maroon ties. He always has this way of speaking to you where you feel both like he's listening intently to you.... and like he's not listening at all. Like someone that sees all of you... but is perhaps so far seeing, that he might be able to see right through you. I wondered what he was able to see beyond me.  His office has two pianos. A baby-grand, and an upright. Both black. There's his desk. A window. Built in shelving. And always the very delicate scent of floral candle wax. Tom carried himself with an air of dignity that one would associate with a collegiate level piano professor.

Tom sits at the desk:

Tom: Hey. Come on in. (Phone rings) Do you mind if i just take this for a second? It's my wife.
Me: Oh no.... go ahead. (I never protested his taking phone calls.... it wasn't like i was paying for his time or anything)

He would discuss something that sounded very very dire and then end the conversation seriously, and politely.

Tom: How is everything going? How are you settling into your room? (This was accompanied by that intense and benign knowing stare.)
Me: Oh... everything's fine. Going well i suppose. (Happy face. Fake happy face)
Tom: What are you roommates like?
Me:.... er. hm..... well. They're puerto rican. (As if that should explain away all these questions.)
Tom: Do you like them? Are you all getting along?
Me: ... ... ... well. Yeah. Everything's fine i guess. I don't really talk to them much and they don't talk to me.
Tom: How's work?
Me: Oh its fine... it's hard work.... but i don't mind.
Tom: Where is it that you work again?
Me: Oh, i work in the Dinning Common. Im a cook. (Brightly)
Tom: (Eyes widen) Oh... Oh right. I don't know how i could have forgotten that. Do you.... enjoy it?
Me: (I thought for a moment before answering.) Enjoy it? No i don't guess that would be the best word for what im doing there.
Tom: Well. I just worry about my students who work around heavy machinery. It's not safe. I just think about all those grinders and mixers. They could end a career.
Me: (blank look.... eyes widen... Im silent. I hadn't thought about the possibility of getting my hand stuck in a hobart. I scream. The other cooks look on in horror.... Blood everywhere.)
Tom: (Seeing the little scene playing in my mind) Well! Why don't we have prayer and then start!
"Father... we thank you for your unfailing love for us. I pray that here in this time you've given us, you would help me to be instrumental in Josh's learning... I pray that you would help him with his 'room situation' that you would show him ways to be helpful to those around him... I pray for Kendra that her Aunt would be able to find an apartment quickly... and for all of those that are without you today... that you would bring them to yourself. Amen"

OK.... what should we start with. How's the Bach coming?
Me: It's going well. I'm making headway. The reading is difficult, but I really like the piece.
Tom: Ok. Have you marked the theme throughout? All four voices?
Me: Yeah.... they're all marked. But i wasn't sure about the inversion of the theme here... if that was something you wanted noted as well.
Tom: That's fine. I don't think that's essential. Let's hear what you have.
Me: Alright. (I find my bearings. and begin playing.)

It wasn't a perfect performance by any means. There were misread notes. Rhythms that were a hair short or long. And it has always been difficult for me to be emotionally involved in such a precise type of music. Bach is clinical and elegant. Bach never had a shouting fit in his kitchen with a jealous lover in which china was thrown.

The rest of the day continued as scheduled. I thanked Tom for his help. I had also begun to refer to him as 'Mr. G.' How highschool. How 'Mr. Holland's Opus' of me, I thought.

Night fell and I was looking forward to sleeping. I would get up early... I would shower and start studying for the Introduction to Music Lit. test that i had coming up in two days. Christmas was getting closer and closer and i didn't have enough seconds in the day. I'd had dinner with the gang... The same old gang from when we had picked up trash. And there were a couple of new members that I'll introduce you to soon.
All the last bells had rung and it was starting to settle down in the room. It's nearing midnight and I'm starting to drift off.

The door swings open with a THUD, and light from the ever-florescently-bright-hallway pours in. In stalks Devin. Crap. All sleepy feelings are tossed away. Devin was yet another puerto rican... and some back wards relation of Ramon. I will not attempt to describe him physically, as I will be un-kind. He stalks into the room with gaucho swagger. He's dressed in nothing but his boxers. He flicks the room light on.
Devin: (Grasping his genitals and shaking them violently.) "Oy! Mira! Mira Pato! (He does a little dance and laughs as if he has been named the Anit-Christ.) He does all this while glancing out the door and down the hall to make sure he isn't alerting the attention of Roland.
He continues making noise and flickering the lights until he gets a response.

As fortune would have it... i was the only one who flickering the lights actually affected. I slept on the top of the double bunk.... there was no way for me to build a protective light barrier out of sheets and blankets. My blood pressure had almost instantly reached boiling. I yelled at him to get out of the room. His response was to play with himself, and the light switch a bit more.... Laugh and chatter at me in puerto rican. Then slam the door as the Authority approached.

The experience left me a bit rattled. This was my first experience with what i would come to learn was called 'hazing.' I wasn't fitting into the social fabric well enough. And this was my punishment.
This wouldn't be the last of Devin's little dances. This wouldn't be the last time he prattled himself around like a little brown gay dolphin.
This was only the beginning. And no one flicks on the lights and shakes their genitals at me. No one. I have a schedule. I have goals. I will not be toyed with.
This would be the beginning. I would burn down whatever village he had crawled here from. I would raid the filthy streets and allies he had played kick ball in.... His mother would beg for mercy... but would have none.

Collusion: Part VII

Morning creeps in through the metal blinds of the room. 200 alarm clocks have been set to roughly 12 minute intervals beginning at 5 am; all along the hall. The rest of the room didn't have classes at eight am. They had planned their schedules around the luxury of rising at 10 am. I would come to realize this was a common wisdom amongst students, and it was only my in-experience and freshmen class availability that had forced me to begin the learning process in the dead of night.

Leap from the top bunk. More or less land gracefully. Stagger. Slip into my flip-flops. The room is fuzzy at this point and filled with little grunts and sleep sounds from the other constituents. Towel. Shower caddy. Then a trudge down the hall to the showers.
Twelve or thirteen more of the cement and tile, military style showers that were so common here. Now was a good time to shower, because i wouldn't find myself waiting in a line to do so... the closer the clock came to 8:30 am, the more likely you were to be waiting in a line, 5 men deep. This was certainly not how i had come to think of bathing before school. Before here, showering was something that was equal parts sanitation and therapy... think, Calgon commercial... or, a Dove ad in Seventeen.
Not so here. It was just another part of commerce. To be completed as quickly as possible. Lather up... Spray yourself off. Offer polite conversation to other shower members.... but only if they begin the conversation. If other members of the shower happen to be singing, it is impolite to giggle, chortle, or guffaw, regardless of their pitch and tone. You must never enter the shower without sandals of some sort. The floors ( and likely more surface areas of the showers than I'm comfortable thinking about ) are crawling/ swimming with bacteria of every sort. Ebola. Hantavirus, Athletes foot, tennis elbow, and scurvy. It would be fool hardy to consider ones immune system strong enough to withstand attacks from the shower floor. If you cut yourself shaving, you'd better have good insurance.

I returned to the room to dress and the time keeping the pulse of the clock, as being late to a class was something that i could not allow myself to do. I did not want run-ins with the Authority. I was in the habit of styling my shorty-short brown hair with a product not un-like roofing caulk. Think hedgehogs with crew cuts. Already i had begun to re-style myself to send subtle messages about my individuality apart from the confines of Almighty Handbook. As far as i could tell, dress categories here amongst students could be more or less follow the major divisions of the Cast, and the styles would follow the divisions respectively, from most popular to least.
Dress Clues to Cast Membership:

Prep: Generally a style most used by members of the upper strata of the Cast, Prep males were outfits that fit like they were tailored for them. P-coats in the winter or trench in the rain. They carry their books in leather bags that they sling over their shoulder. Colors are conservative, or ever so occasionally gem tone. Ties in patterns that can be found in 17th century French wallpaper. Hair styles deviate ever so slightly from the confines of AH.... the slightest stylistic variation to send a message.... I was learning quickly how these messages worked. Female Preps were much easier to spot. Just look down. A heel of three inches and higher worn daily almost always indicates membership in this style block. Pencil skirts are quit common, as well as knee length tailored wool coats worn in the winter with scarves and pearls. After looking down, look up. female Preps wear their hair in voluminous slightly curled-volumized-shiny shoulder length manes. They spend hours cultivating this look in the morning. They carry all of their scholastic needs for the day in a large purse. Large enough to fit a laptop, and two books. These purses are commonly made of leather, or faux snake-skin. Dress colors vary, but stick to a common theme of slate and jewel tones.

Common American Eagles: The broadest stylistic block. This group contains members of all sections of the Cast. As the name indicates, anything that American Eagle sells, goes. That's nearly all i need to say. Females in this style block almost always wear ballet flats. Males choose khaki distressed chinos and button downs in colors that it would be easy to ignore. Leather shoes.

The Shunned: These were the rest of the population. The ones who hadn't attached large portions of their ego to the cost of the threads on their backs. Tennis shoes or cousins of the tennis shoe are common among both genders. Males wear button downs in a solid color... and they are often one half size too large; and/or pleat fronted chinos in navy blue. You must at all cost avoid dressing beneath your allotment in the cast.

Introduction to Music Literature.

It was one of the core classes for any music major here and as such was quite populous. Any student who had planned to perform or teach anything in the musical realm would have to take this class at some point along their journey. The class was lead by a short and delicately precise man named Fred Coleman. He drove at break-neck speeds, giving sweeping over-views of a large portion of Western Music.  On the first day of class heir Coleman instructed that we should feel the liberty of referring to him affectionately as ‘Uncle Fred.’ I chose not to. I decided that there was quite enough fantasy here without having to imagine that I was related to the teachers. His teaching style was quite theatrical. He came up with clever acronyms for remembering important names and dates, and once or twice leaped onto the bench of the 9 foot Steinway to make a point and awaken a few of the members of the class. Even though it was a three credit class it had the reputation of being as easy as yawing, and thus lured in students with such far reaching majors as ‘Missions’ and ‘Counseling’ or ‘Being A Virtuous and Child Bearing Woman.’

It was absolute foolishness for me to have taken the class first semester, topping off my work-load at 20 credits straight out of the gate. I had nothing to compare the work-load with, however, and so thought nothing of it. This was one of the classes that i didn’t study for. Five or six rows 20 people long filled with bright eyed pupils converged in a large diamond shaped room precisely at three o’clock in the afternoon Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. A sweeping variety of the social strata were represented, and as we were seated by our last names; I would be situated between a quiet, mousy-brown haired Jane Doe Groupie and a mute Seriously Serious Musician.

Time was moving quickly to the point where everyone should have chosen their opposing-gender companions for Artist Series. I had no idea where to begin. Women out-numbered men on the campus two to one. Perhaps because statistically women tend to pursue higher education more these days…. Or it could be because they’re more likely to believe that wearing panty hose would grant you special privileges in the after-life. Be that as it may, if I had too I could resort to making a randomized phone call to one of the woman’s dormitories…. Whoever. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just pick one. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I would need to come up with something soon though. I would by no means allow that barrel-chested puppet of the regime, Roland, to predict my social arrangements. 

There were a few minutes before class started in which the students were shuffling their things around willy-nilly and chattering about assignments or other events. At the beginning of the semester moods were light and the students felt free to cross the boundaries of the social strata. A love of music was the common thread. It was a room full of people who in some way or another, worshipped beauty. Same as me.

I was bored with the people sitting beside me, so I turned around to survey the row behind. Girls. Perfect. I scanned the row homing in on those who looked like they were closest matches to my own situation in the Cast. My eyes darted around quickly assessing tiny details in dress or conversation. Assessment 100% complete.

Me: “Hello!” I said brightly. “I’m Josh! What’s you’re name?” I offered the girl behind me in a tinsel covered tone.

Girl: “I’m Christine.” She replied. Her tone was quizzical. She had a smirky look on her face… like I was speaking elvish or something. “I know who you are.”

Target Acquired. Parameters set… This would be my female companion to required entertainment. Christine was an inch shorter than me and had shoulder length ash blonde hair that fell gracefully to her shoulders. Straight white teeth. Im quite partial to people with good dental hygiene. She had fascinatingly large blue eyes the color of a frozen lake. Gray blue. She used them to regard me with skepticism.

Me: “Hey…. So…. Do you have any plans for Artist Series?”

Christine: “Not yet.” Languid. Emotionless. Complicated.I liked her already.

Me: “Well…. Hm…. Wanna go with me?”

My tactlessness amused her. I amused her in general. At least that what her smallest of smiles indicated.

“Sure.” She said.

Click.

Mission accomplished. We talked a little more before class started. I attempted to sculpt away the awkwardness of my introduction/invitation with a bit of humor. Fred started the class with a prayer. He asked mystic Hebrew god to guide the class towards knowledge… I listened intently and took pages of notes. I would soak up everything he had to say.

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 IV

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

Josh Medlin

"Cook"

Dinning Common Staff

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

 Of course i wanted to cook! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collusion: Part II & 1/2

Ghandi has something to say about society. Regardless of your thoughts on popular culture, without a doubt you are swayed by it and your involvement in it sways others. We make the world that we live in.... and the inverse is more true than any of us likes to admit. Even if we are all little islands, the waters of social interaction flow all around us... bring in touring concepts... shape the landscape of our lives; and despite our ideas about originality and choice, force mutation after mutation.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another. Mohandas Ghandi

Fascinating, isn't it? I became aware of this all too clearly when I started school at BJU. As a reader you are likely questioning the viability of this school as a broad representation of the rest of north american society.... and those thoughts are just. Warranted even. Even if the only thing you know about BJU is what you can find on wikipedia.... you may well be aware that this place has its own anthropological zip code. Everyone that is touched by it is left with at least some of the same finger marks.

I say all of this by way of introduction back into 'collusion'. The difference in my schedule from before my time here, and now was striking. I was determined to do well. I was determined to earn my keep. From the morning of my first arrival my life began to be more and more regulated. There was a bell in the hall way that woke me up at the same time every morning; and that same bell dictated that i should turn off my lamp at night. click. click. Duplicates of that same bell could be found in hallways all around campus. Ring. Go to bed. Ring. Wake up. Ring eat. Ring. Pray.
Those self same bells weren't just bossing me around. They were the levies... and the metronomes of everyone on campus. Tiny dictators that affected all aspects of the micro society, from Joe Political Science, all the way to The President Himself. 
Oppressed by it? Not at all. I was in love with the concept.

I often think how lucky i was to have my first toe holds into social experience happen here. Not because i think it did such an amazing job of preparing me for the future... rather because the machinations of this particular society were so specific and so radically different from society as usual that the experience would be akin to discovering a lost protestant tribe deep in the heart of middle america.

How does one go about describing a micro society? I think I need to...in order to have some bones to have the flesh of this narrative hang on. I will pretend that im you... and that i am discovering this lost tribe first off. Ive already introduced you to the differing levels of the Cast system. Lets talk dress code.
Almighty Handbook is published once a year by University Press. (The Press is a financial cash cow for BJU. They use it to publish all the books for every christian school on the eastern seaboard, the mid-west... parts of Hawaii and beyond. It's housed in one of the largest buildings on campus.) As i said before, Almighty Handbook dictates all aspects of student life. All aspects. And its all-seeing eyes do not miss dress code. I thought i was going to have to go through the trouble of remembering all of it and regurgitating for this story. Thankfully not. It can be easily accessed via the internet. Yessssss.
What you are about to read is real. 

Go ahead! Click on it!

Dress Code for Men

Alright. I know what you're thinking. First that it's the kind of side-splitting funny that just has to be true. And you're right! But cultivating and controlling the impulses of an age demographic that is characterized by experimentation and self-expression is just one aspect of this college experience. It's often a point of contention as you might expect. This one chapter of Almighty Handbook is like all of its others... and is driven by a type of world view that worships mystic Hebrew god.... and holds one book in higher regard than even Almighty Handbook. His Book.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 All of that to give you colors to paint with. How else could i describe the tribe? A hive. Those first weeks of school were as busy as if you had kicked an ant hill. Everyone busy about his own business. Work. Class. Each ant was someone new to meet. New connections to forge... and quickly i was learning that within the confines of the rules set down by Almighty Handbook... there were other powerful ways in which the ants could express themselves. A skirt was an inch too high. A button was loose. One smells like Abercrombie. One smells like Hollister. The smallest of indication that they had decided where to place themselves in the Cast; that they decided whom and what they would obey. Fascinating. All of it. Fascinating. I would soon learn that success academically would be decided by how well i could obey Almighty Handbook.... but social success would be determined by how easily i broke its laws with out alerting the attention of the Authority.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The Authority. You must realize that the laws of the bells and Almighty Handbook are completely useless,  unless you have a regulatory system in place to enforce such laws. The Authority will be discussed later. There is turkey to be eaten. There is family to attend to. Happy Thanksgiving.