00 Departure
01 Initiation
02 Crossing back the Threshold
—————— a (Goodbye Shyness)
—————— b (Girls)
☞————— c (Gwen — Prelude)
—————— d (Sportsman Inn Bootybanger)
—————— e (Gwen)
03 Rebuild of Evangelion
College of Dramatic Persons
Dorothea — dining-hall crush
Gwen — wooed one
Kerenza — Gwen's friend and Kanika's roommate
Regina — friend and member of the Russian speaking clique
Kenneth — Regina's friend
Pepe — best buddy
Almas — friend and member of the Russian speaking clique
Dunya — Suitemate and member of the Russian speaking clique
Karol — Suitemate and Corey's roomate
Corey — Suitemate and Karol's roommate
Kanika — Friend, next door neighbour and Kerenza's roommate
Edna — downstairs suite neighbor
Rosa — friends' friend
Melika — friend
Sid — friend
Alex — friend
I. The Call to Adventure
In junior year of college I was taking most of my meals with our Russian speaking clique; my proficiency with my mother's tongue reached its peak. It was late in the spring semester, after dormitory assignments had been made for the following year. As she rejoined the dinner table our Belarusian member imparted a crack. On her way she heard somebody at another table asking Karol if he was going to live with me. Once I got up, perhaps to fetch more cranberry juice, I saw that that somebody was Gwen. I recognized her as the person whose profile had been repeatedly appearing under the “people you may know” section on Facebook, which I had interpreted as an indicator of her having checked out my own page. She seemed like an overly proper girl on that small picture. Plain. I first clicked on it after this eavesdropping incident; little is as attractive as female attention. Once I had taken a look, I couldn't help but incessantly go through her tagged photos. I thought I had never seen such a beautiful person before.
I confided my interest in Gwen in a couple of friends. It supposedly had something to do with Regina's decision to pursue Kenneth. She asked me if she should do it as we drove to my place in Red Hook, where I stayed while doing summer research. It was her idea to take me and Kenneth to Blue Moon, a strip bar in New Palz, and was now giving me a lift home. She pondered out loud if she should pursue Kenneth. She described him as a nice and nerdy guy. I'm embarrassed to say that I thought she was describing me, that I was like King David before the prophet Nathan, making judgment upon myself. She said she was horny and that she could do anything at that point. With him. I was already imagining her in my Red Hook bedroom. I told her she should go for it.
A few nights later, having drunk a bottle of wine alone which did nothing to me or my self pity, while watching my old favourite Lost in Translation on my laptop, I walked out to the back porch with the cigarette I had just glued together with honey. That broken cigarette had remained in my inner jacket pocket for many months ever since a night I bummed it and left a party with it burning in my mouth on a lark and put it out when out of sight. A car pooled into the trail next to the garage shed. “Mark!” Regina called from the darkness. I was not a smoker so it was to be a reprimandable act rather than a bad habit. Still I lit the cigarette. Since the previous night the two of them stayed at the house. It was the end of July but the day had been grey, pleasantly cool. It had rained. We had had breakfast together, watched “The Odd Couple” on Regina's laptop, gone to the cinema though at the end I didn't join them to the movie. Regina came and took the cigarette away. I asked Regina to talk privately. We went for a walk around the block. I made my confession to her. She asked why now. Said she had asked me about going for Kenneth, that she had a good thing going on with him. I asked her why she had avoided dancing with me, one time after she danced with a guy who “passed her to me;” she said she avoided touch which she knew led to other things. She asked me why I had told her about other girls, about Gwen, then said it wouldn't matter anyway. Later she and Kenneth got married.
II. Refusal of the Call
Summer over, I found out that Gwen's best friend Kerenza was living in the opposite suite. On the second weekend of the semester Gwen and I made our acquaintance. It was not a good day for me. At dinner I had no appetite despite feeling very hungry. I poked around my food and after my two messmates had left to catch the shuttle I remained sitting, doing nothing and feeling depressed. I submitted my Abstract Algebra II homework and headed home.
I shared my Village F suite with three conservatory students: the two sophomores Corey and Karol who shared a room and the senior Dunya, previously of the Russian speaking clique that was no longer, who had her own room. People were aggregating there, a party was gaining momentum. I had a beer and made myself ramen that I couldn't finish. Answering the door I found the girl who was surrounded the night before by medics and security, whoever she was, outside Smog. Not in a social mood to begin with, I felt helplessly worse later when we lingered a moment at each other's eyes. I drank wine and a big shot of vodka with Karol and his cousin who was visiting. Despite my mood I got acquainted with everybody around, including Gwen whom Kerenza brought. Gwen had not been at the fore of my mind. I made myself a mug of half & half gin and tonic.
Security's Larry arrived, reprimanded the drinking and the crowd dispersed. I headed alone to a concert at another dorm building. I danced with friends. I left with Pepe and Kanika. I felt terrible. I said I needed a drink to forget. We passed a gravelly spot and in a theatrical gesture of biblical tradition I fell to my knees and threw dirt on my hair. Just then a trio I had danced with appeared. Melika said that I was crazy for the second time that evening. The first time she followed it with “we should hang out.” We continued together and when one of them departed, Melika wished her to be ok. I put into question her choice of addressee. I said it was not she who had been lying on the gravel. “A girl in the dark alone,” Melika answered. Pepe, Kanika and I went to another dancy dorm, Village K. Kanika handed me a glass and a tequila bottle. I said she should drink too and the three of us downed a shot each. We left together back home to Village F (Village Fantasies) but lost Kanika who went into her own suite.
The previous night just before bed I was on Facebook chatting with one Edna, from the downstairs suite, before whom I laid myself bare. She encouraged and comforted me, effectively enough that I told her by the end, “you made me stop feel miserable about myself.” Edna answered, “she's (and no one else) not worth feeling miserable over!”
And yet here, a day later, in my room, I bawled before Pepe as I had rarely done before. Gave away the name I withheld during lunch when telling him the story of last night. Added to it a confession of attraction towards his friend, Rosa. When we returned from his cigarette break outside I told him of Gwen, who I thought was the most beautiful entity in the world, whom I had met that evening. I wept in fetal position, because I was sad, lonely, desperate and perhaps because I was drunk. I said I was stupid. I felt I was. It was late and Pepe left to sleep in an empty room in the opposite suite.
III. Supernatural Aid
Two weeks later Pepe came from the neighboring suite and asked if I knew who was there at Kerenza's room, wiggling his eyebrows. I said I was not sure we were on he same page. He said it was Gwen. I have forgotten how late I told Pepe about Gwen and yet back then I didn't remember that I had told him already. “I told you when I cried, right?” I said. He offered to help me, go there with me and spark conversation. We were out by the building entrance for his cigarette, talking with a guy and one cute Emily whom I had noticed before but spoke with for the first time, when Gwen left the building. Thereby she also left my sight, but not my mind, for a couple of weeks. I'm letting her leave the story, too. She didn't have to, indeed I came to tell our story, but I feel that the omission of the intervening events would have been dishonest. So I let the story go on without her.
IV. Belly of the Whale
I'm interested in observing the deviation between my memory and the reality as recorded in my journals. Not only the timing of telling Pepe about Gwen was forgotten. I have forgotten about the reoccurring female attention from individuals I had found attractive. At first it struck me as refuting my now reconsidered self-notion as a Mister Cellophane. Still, it attests to my inability to answer such attention or even keep it in mind, as if I were poor because I had holes in my pockets. I have forgotten too how early in the year Dorothea happened. My memory reordered events in what seemed the most plausible sequence.
One might wonder whether alcohol had anything to do with it. The devil is in the details, and when the details are forgotten, the whole picture smooths out to something conventional, like a movie people talk about without having watched it. More exactly, the image washes down and whirrs under a haze, pareidolia kicks in and out comes a new imagine, of the familiar, of course, since we only perceive the familiar. Details shift, are made up and rearrange themselves into the new order. I'd expect time to have been able to render this simplification of life into fairy tales on its own, but who knows. Perhaps vino does not contain veritas, but renders the diuretic hole through which it slips out. Be as it may, I thought that after falling into the abyss a week earlier, I had by this point become a teetotaller. I forgot that this, too, did not happen, if it can be said that one can forget the absence of something.
Bottle of beer
A day after Gwen left the building. Coming to the dining-hall I saw Almas through the glass walls. On his left sat a girl who had joined me on lunch that day and told me of a friend who got drunk on last spring's block party, disappeared into the night and turned up in a Poughkeepsie hospital with a broken nose. I sat down on Almas's right. The table was made out of square romantic tables pushed together in a long row. Before us sat Chinese girls and one Vietnamese. At my tablepiece sat Mei. I avoided her face. “Hello, how are you?” she said and we started a pleasant conversation. Almas drew me into a chat with a question. The girls got up to leave but Mei did so hesitatingly. She dallied then said it was nice talking to me and that we'd finish the conversation some other time. I don't think we ever did. Almas tagged me along to get books from the library and back to my dorm. On the way I told him that that girl was damn cute. Almas, a little Kazakh with a big baritone voice in him, opined about West/East cultural differences and their intra- and inter-relations. He said that Chinese girls were desperate (though he didn't want to use that word, he said) because Chinese boys were not approaching them but then others didn't either.
In the common-room Dunya listened to Vysotsky. I took out beers for me and my brosky. She asked Almas for his take on what the Soviet bard spake and they began discussing Vysotsky.
Flute of champagne
Pepe's car drives by. Old frog leaps in behind Sid. Going off campus.
Alex's birthday fest. Tivoli fall is repelled with champagne and cake.
Glass of coconut rum cocktail
It was a nice party with the usuals around. Alex, a little gay fair haired boy, a conservatory student, was himself an American American, possibly the only one around. What attracted him to us, I wonder? I mixed myself a cocktail of coconut rum and orange juice. I don't know if I finished drinking it, I hope I didn't. It tasted awful.
Shot of mystery spirit
Hopefully sooner than later a gal picked up the orange juice carton and said it was not orange juice. She didn't say what it was, but it was not orange juice. Then I had a shot with Sid. A shot of what, we don't know.
Pepe was saying it was my free night to enjoy without care since he was not coming along to Bootybanger. He told a girl to keep an eye on me but none of us took it seriously.