ANEW: B.C.Y.: A Novel -- Chapter 6 (working draft)
Episode #6
It’s time again for Episode #6 of B.C.Y.:A Novel. Read from the beginning, or keep it right here. If you read from the start of the novel, you’ll get to see the arc of the story and the main character’s picaresque perambulations. But feel free to jump in wherever you want.
Preface: This is a serialization of B.C.Y.: A Novel (working title). If you missed the earlier Chapters, you can find them here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5.
Chapter 6
I was in the bowels of a great big aircraft carrier. It was one of those places that school children visit if you live near a Navy port and one of the coasts, Charleston, or Oakland, or Portland. The S.S. Somethingorother. This particular ship had a gigantic theater.
In the theater, they played those newsreel movies about the ship we were on. It was like living in a dream within a dream. The men were prepping for some huge battle in World War II in the Pacific. Meanwhile, you get to see what life was like in the rest of the ship. They had a barbershop and a bowling alley, and off in the corner, as you rounded one of those shippy spiral staircases, there was a picture of the movie theater with the men watching the movie in the same theater where I was.
There was also a Captain who looked like a movie star or the general from White Christmas. If he didn’t have on a uniform, you would think he was just a mild-mannered owner of some inn in Vermont where his boys would come to one day to surprise him.
The ship also housed a jail, which they showed in the movie. It was the Brig. It looked pretty small and inconsequential. As I looked closer at the man in the Brig, I realized it was me.
I awoke with a start, banging my head on the ceiling. Trippy, I thought. I knew I needed to do something different because I could hardly ever remember any of my dreams. Here I was dreaming and remembering, and they were now in living color. Set off against the backdrop of war. Was being in college like being adrift on the sea? Were we all adrift with some people going out and flying bombing missions on the various islands held by some nameless enemy and the rest of us just watching—or worse? Even with the bang on the noggin, I drifted hard again to…
Noticing that I was sweating profusely at this point. Awake? Dreaming? AwakeDreaming? I was dripping sweat, and my breathing was pretty rapid. Drenched all over, really, sweating through the sheets. I got up briefly and immediately had to sit down again in the living room that we shared with our other two roommates. I felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest. Like if I didn’t do something quick it would explode. I lay down in the dark in the middle of the floor as the room began to spin around me. I threw up a little in my mouth, but since I hadn’t eaten all the well over the past three weeks, I had begun to lose weight. I probably was down twelve to fifteen pounds. I moved my head to one side, and I could smell the couch. It was like old cigarettes and cat pee. What a horrible thing to die in a room that I hardly spent any time in. I hated this suite, and I didn’t want to die like this. But out the window, which should have been the courtyard, I could see…
I was on an island somewhere in the Pacific. I was in the middle of some trail that led up a steep mountain. When I looked up, I bolted to my feet. I knew that I was still dreaming because I could not move that fast in real life. I kept telling myself, just go with it. In the end, you will get what you want. Just be malleable and go with it.
What was I supposed to go with? Being stuck in some jungle habitat at the edge of a mountain. I was suddenly scared because when I looked down, a black leopard was gnawing at my toes.
When I woke up, I was in another dorm room. It was not my dorm room? Yes, it was a dorm room, but it also looked like a hospital room, too. A hospital dorm room? No one was around. I turned my head slightly, and I could see the window with the boxy thing hiding the apparatus over the Levelor vertical PVC blinds. On my left side, as I adjusted to the very dim light, I had a needle in my arm and an IV drip. I wonder what they were putting in me. As I looked down at my arms, I noticed that I was restrained. I was in some shackles—hands and feet, tied to a metal bed, foam mattress, no sheets, bottom or top. Why the hell did they have to shackle me, I thought? What in the hell did I do? Kill somebody? Go after a cop?
About fifteen minutes into my wonderings and lethargy, a Jamaican nurse comes in. She is talk-singing at me at the top of her lungs. “Rise and shiiiine, Rise and shine. Wakey, wakey, Sonny boy.”
“What’s going on,” I croaked. Trying to use my voice, but it came out sounding like Froggy on the Little Rascals. “Where am I? Hos-hos-hos…” [I frogged out]. “Yale-New Haven?”
“Are you kidding me? I thought you Yale boys knew everything? At least, that’s what I have been told. They found you, honey.”
I shook my head a couple of times thinking that I had to get my bearings.“Where am I?” I croaked again.
“Look, if you were supposed to know where you are and why you have been in here and how long you have been here…”
Finding my voice and with all I could muster. “I’m not playing games. Where am I? Why are these cuffs on me?”
“They are not cuffs. They are restraints.”
“Well, duh. I could see that, but why am I being held against my will.”
“You aren’t being held against your will,” She laughed at this. “You have no will…” looking at my chart to get my name “…Schaeffer. You’re now the property of the Y.P.I.”
“Unlock me, so I can go ho…” I almost said “home” but caught myself. “Back to Pierson.”
“I’m affraaaiiid I cahn’t do that,” she said almost like it was a song. “You’re here until they tell you you aren’t here.”
I stared blankly.
“Get it?”
“No,” I said. I do not understand. “What’s Y.P.I?”
“Well, if you want to know.”
“YES,” I practically hoarse-screamed. “TELL ME BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND RIP YOUR LUNGS OUT!!”
“Well, look at you. Just look at you.” She leaned in real close so that no one else could hear. “If you do that again, (softer) I might just have cause to put my big old panties in your mouth. You think that you are cottoned mouthed now, Mister, wait until you get mine in your mouth, Mister Schaaaaefffer.”
I shut my mouth real tight and looked at her with a real sense of terror. I believe that she would do it.
Backing away and going once again about her business, “So, where were we? Oh yeah, are you too hot or too cold?”
I felt like I was in some alternate version of Goldie Locks. Perhaps I was supposed to say ‘just right,’ but I didn’t take the bait.
I leaned back, pressing my back flat against the table, trying not to cry.
What in the hell happened to me happened to lots of undergraduates under way too much stress; we cracked. It seemed like I had been hallucinating for a while. But this was NOT the infirmary. The Y.P.I.?
Apparently, and what I was told, I had gotten up from my slumber in my dorm room and made my way to cross campus. It was crazy that I had made it all the way over there without a jacket because I told her and anyone else who would listen, apparently, that I was too damned hot.
I took off all of my clothes and got a ride to the Y.P.I., the Yale Psychiatric Institute. No, this news took a while to sink in. Was I crazy? Did I go nuts? I must have. I must have. Can that be? No, I couldn’t believe it, but here I was. I know I was under some stress, but... Here I was, thinking I was not like everybody else. Now, I had the battle scars and the restraints to prove it. I had cracked up and landed myself at the Y.P.I.
The Yale Psychiatric Institute was not on the Yale Campus at all. It was on the grounds of Albertus Magnus College, which was a women’s college just up Prospect Street. It was, as far as I could tell, a desperate and terrible place filled with lots of people talking to themselves out in the hallway. Schizophrenics. Psychotics. Dual Diagnoses.
I was completely disoriented. I had no idea how long I had been here or how long these people intended to keep me. I’m not sure what a 51/50 was, but I was definitely in here for more than just a few hours. Maybe I was just here for observation, or some other language that I learned on one of the medical shows like Marcus Welby, MD.
I was suddenly very tired again. Why the hell was I so tired? Again…
I was in an old castle this time. All of the rooms were very big, with oversized chairs, a couple of grandfather’s clocks, rich embroidered tapestry, and gold pieces flecked everywhere like out of some Gustav Klimt painting. I knew I was not making sense, but there was nothing else to do, ‘Where were they taking me in this drafty ass place?’ I thought to myself.
I awoke with a start but couldn’t move a muscle. Awake-dreaming? Dreaming awake? I had not moved one inch since I had come into the place. I was stuck in a state of agitation, like Victor Frankenstein’s monster after the lightning bolt--reanimated. I remember thinking I was too pissed not to take names. Strapped to a table. One bumpy ride. Buckle-up. Tight. What in the hell was I thinking about? I was even confusing myself. It was like, ‘I am just talk-thinking to myself.’ So, here we were on the grounds of a college that I didn’t even really know where we were.
This time, when I woke in real life, I could hear the rain on the roof above me. It was raining to beat the band. All I could think of was that I was glad that I wasn’t going to go home anymore. I tried to turn over, but I couldn’t. So, I stopped trying.
I just wanted to escape inside of my weird world with all of the cough syrup with codeine that I could drink. Someone told me once that you could actually get stoned on cough syrup. Why this struck me now was beyond me. Facing toward the meshed window, I just focused on the light.
“Hey, Schaeffer. I’m Dr. Chan.” A very small person came around to where I was staring and peered over her chart at me. It looked like she was taking a survey at the grocery store, eyeing me dispassionately.
“Yeah…when can I leave.” I looked towards the top of what probably were trees.
“We are just making sure that you are okay, okay.”
“You don’t sound all that sure,” I wiggled my restraints to make the point. “I’d like these off. I’m having a hard time feeling my legs.”
“Oh no, are they too tight? I’ll get the nurse to loosen them a little bit.”
“But why am I in them?” I shook the shackles rather hard, underscoring some point.
“No, we have to…have to…have to leave them on.”
“You don’t sound too sure,” I said flatly, facing her. I thought for a moment about what I wanted to say. “This makes me seem like some kind of monster. What did I do to make people think I was ‘a danger to myself and others?’”
“You had no clothes on at Cross Campus, for one.”
“Come on, people do not get locked up for streaking. Tons of people get naked, right.”
“Right, but you were threatening people…menacing them…now you’re…now you’re safe.”
“You mean ‘now they’re safe, right?”
She read silently from her notebook, turning her back to me and towards the dorm windows with grated metal protectors. It looked like she was looking through Swiss cheese. There was once a closet at the far end of the dorm room, but the doors and the tracks to the doors had been removed. There were no curtains, so the light outside was fading to dusk.
“How long have I been here?” The doctor did not seem to hear me, so I repeated myself. “HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN IN HERE?!”
Dr. Chan jumped with a start. “No good to yell. Yelling is not good. Stone that lease.”
“What? I have no idea what you just said there.” I did stop yelling and waited for her to tell me something. She just turned away and read deeper into her charts.
“Excuse me, Doc. How long I got?”
She read.
“Doc, how long will I be in here?”
Dr. Chan looked up from her reading, flipping the page to the next set of notes.
“This is very interesting. You from Chicago, right?”
It was my turn to remain silent.
This time looking up and coming over to me, she reiterated, “It says that you from Chicago, yes?”
“Technically, no. I’m not from Chicago. I’m in this hospital no man’s land right now. How about you, Doc? Where are you from?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“If we are chitchatting, you may want to reveal something about yourself.” I tried to lift my hand to my eye to scratch it, but as far as I got was three inches above the bed. “Can I please have the benefit of the doubt and have you loosen my shack… err, restraints so that I might scratch my nose.”
Dr. Chan came over and leaned down, quickly took out a handkerchief, and rubbed my nose back and forth vigorously. My nose did feel better. She must be used to scratching other people’s noses.
After Dr. Chan left, I was visited by an assortment of other doctors and therapists. Some of them seemed younger than some of the first-year students. From what they told me, which I have no memory of myself, I made quite the scene at Cross Campus. Not only did I take my clothes off and ran around in below-freezing weather, but I also pooped in the middle of the quad, picking it up and rubbed it up and down the bricks leading down to the underground library, inviting people over to “play Tom Sawyer’s fence painting” for a nickel or dead cat. When the Yale cops got there, apparently, I tried to bite one of them—I was hoping that it was my friend from last year. I then ran away, saying, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” Luckily, they didn’t. They just tackled me and drove me to Yale-New Haven Hospital, shot me up with something strong, and then onto the YPI. No wonder my ribs were so damned sore.
They gradually released me from the mechanical restraints, and I began to make my way onto the unit. Mama had been called. We spoke, and I told her that I was fine. That I was just taking a little break from my studies. She knew better because the doctors and the police had been communicating cryptically with her since the incident happened over on Cross Campus. Funny, she didn’t know exactly what happened. All she knew was that I would be okay and not to worry. I actually was feeling pretty good when we spoke.
Other than some meds for a little agitation and anxiety, I felt better than I had in a number of years. I’m not sure if I believed what they said about streaking and smearing poop on the walls. That just didn’t sound like me. Then I remembered. I smoked something that night that one of the guys from upstairs gave me. I’m not sure what the hell it was. PCP? Something else? That’s the thing, more than anything, I hated feeling out of control. Even worse, I hated being out of control. It sounded like I was out of control that evening. Out of my freakin’ mind is more like it. Now, I had to deal with the aftermath.
I told the doctor what happened, and they said that they had run some toxicology tests, but it sounded pretty factual. Other than the anxiety, which I was very aware of, they didn’t think I was schizoaffective or had some pre-psychotic episode. Well, lad-di-da, Annie Hall. That was good news, I guess.
I was pretty happy with the fact that I could go back to Pierson a conquering hero. I would have given the girls across the hall from Texas with the pearls something to talk about. The only real downside is that no one wanted to shake my hand for a good, solid year. What could be told is I wouldn’t go back to the Y.P.I. for several years, but I would go back—but not as a patient.
After getting settled back in my room and playing a lot of C.S.N. on Ethan’s stereo, I was summoned to the new Master’s office. He was a nice enough guy. He was some kind of M.D., but I wasn’t sure what his specialty was. He and his wife, who was this bird-like woman sat me down and said, “How can we help you?”
That was the opening, and for once I did not know what the hell I should say. After a good awkward silence, I said, “Maybe a single?”
They looked at each other, and the Master’s wife asked, “Yeah, is there something else that we can do? Are you happy here?”
“Happy?” I asked. “Am I happy, my Captain?” I really took time to ponder the question fully.
They again looked at each other with a long pause.
“I guess other than the single, it would be great to do something that didn’t just focus on myself and my own head all day long.”
“Isn’t that what college’s supposed to be about?” Mrs. Master asked.
“Being happy? Focusing on myself?”
The conversation stopped there. I went back to my room, sort of dejected. I really liked the Master and his wife. I wasn’t one of those people who felt like they were out of touch or nincompoops or longed for Gaddis and his wife. They were into the Beats. We had Michael McClure and Allen Ginsberg come to see us. I liked Michael McLure. He seemed like a real dude. He talked about normal stuff, and he seemed like an adult. Ginsberg was a name. Nothing to write home about. The actors and the poets and scientists that we met were important parts of our world. Why wouldn’t we want to meet them and they us? Being twenty and full of ideas, however, lost and misguided, was probably some kind of draw.
One of the people I loved meeting that year was Chicago’s former Mayor, Mike Bilandic, and his lovely wife, Heather. He lost the election of 1979 to Jane Byrne because he messed up by saying the streets of Chicago were fine after a snowstorm. Then, the cutaway shot would be to the street unplowed high with snow. Lying ain’t good when you messin’ with someone’s livelihood. He also had the ‘L’ trains bypass Black neighborhoods, or at least that’s what people said. When a couple of us sat down with Bilandic, he was old-world nice. Good manners in a Chicago working-class way. Hearing firsthand about what it was like to be the Mayor of Chicago, what it meant to lead a very contentious city, and even being sandwiched between Mayor Daley and Jane Byrne was great. There were only three of us who had dinner with the Mayor and his very blonde wife. I liked him. He was definitely a gentleman. I was not one of his detractors when he was mayor. I know that Jesse Jackson decided to endorse Byrne after that whole snowstorm thing, but I thought that he was kind of a Sad Sack figure. He was hopeless with a beautiful ice princess on his arm.
The whole idea of being in a college where semi-famous people just “dropped by” was rather cool. I’m not quite sure how these people happened into our revels, but there they were. Yale Rep, Long Wharf, or even the New Haven Coliseum had people just oopsing on over. In my own thinking, I wanted to be one of those people of note, a famous writer or actor, where people dropped everything and came over to chat–with us. There were the co-eds with sweaters and pearls and the nerdy, tall Jewish dudes with heavy black glasses that looked like they could have walked off of a picture from the mid-1960s. We were a weird amalgam of people, those who were at the school and those who chose to come to see us.
For my own part, my Mono and anxiety got the best of me. I was having a hard time concentrating. I was sleeping a great deal, but I also knew that I could “turn it on” at any time; I always did. My energy was a spigot, I thought. How wrong I was.
My own anxiety was getting the best of me during this time. I remember going down into the Pierson steam tunnels that supposedly connected Pierson with Davenport. Someone said that the tunnels connected the entire University and that you could walk for an eternity under there. A person, it was said, could wander down among the steam tunnels like in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” who swam from one neighbor’s pool to another. That John Cheever story reminded me of how decadent all of our lives were, where we could swim from one home to the next. So, what connected Cleaver and Cheever? Me, of course, I thought. I’m not sure how many folks remember that meeting between Blum and Cleaver, or that Yale professors could be rooting for the downtrodden and underserved. I thought maybe they all were. Whatever the case may be, I knew that it was full and thriving. From Cleaver to Cheever, we roamed through the steam tunnels at Yale. Perhaps I would see Ellison’s phantasm here somewhere. Maybe I was Ellison’s phantasm without all of the dour Southern parts and getting the crap beat out of me before a speech team event, or more like Midwestern guilt, as Vivian said. Oh my, wherefore art thou, ‘Vivian? Not Viv.’
In the middle of my journey, not far from where my dorm door was up above, I felt my heart quickening. At first, I paid it no mind. In the fluorescent light that hung down, illuminating the tunnel just before the Pierson Buttery. My legs began to give out, too. I was hot and sweaty all of a sudden. Maybe this is what a heart attack feels like. I had to get help, or I would be toast. Instead, I slid to the ground and onto my ass. Now, I know I did not have much to eat today. I was losing weight at an alarming rate and people were starting to notice and say stuff. At my heaviest, I weighed, I’m guessing 175 to 180 lbs. I probably was down 30 lbs. I had to be a buck forty or forty-five. As I reached the cold slab of the tunnel floor, my head became somewhat of an echo chamber. I was hearing stuff, or so I thought. My heart was pounding, and I was beginning to feel the perspiration on my shirt front and back, sweat starting to drip down my sternum. I had on a blue flannel shirt unbuttoned over a plain grey t-shirt. My brow was feeling a little damp.
The only thing I could think of at this point is that I hope I wouldn’t have to go back to the Y.P.I. Or worse yet, I hope I wouldn’t be smearing myself all over campus again. I was making a little headway in my work, or so I fooled myself into thinking. I lay down fully on the cold floor, which felt good on my face.
I could still hear the muffled voices, and then a burst of laughter, muffled voices and laughter, repeated. I didn’t have the best hearing in the world, but I could swear that it was a sit-com. I could hear a door open and a loud burst of voices, and the laughter roaring. I could see cowboy boots coming down the hallway my way. I was facing towards the wall just trying to get my heart and breathing under control, so I couldn’t see exactly who it was coming down the hallway, but I heard the clip-clop of boots. Sure enough, there they were.
It took effort to look up. It was one of the Texas girls with pearls. I said, “Uhmm, Hi.”
“Are you okay?” She didn’t have much of an accent, this one.
“I just felt a little queasy,” I lied. “So I’m taking a break.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No, no. Actually, I just felt my heart racing, so I’m just taking a break.” I didn’t know what to say, but I blurted out, “How you doing?”
“Fine.”
She looked more than just kind of worried. She looked like she was going to flee.
She took a step forward and leaned down. “Do you want me to call someone? Your roommate’s that Jewish kid from New York, right?”
“That’s over half the kids in my friend group,” I said un-ironically.
“Evan or Allen…”
“Oh, Ethan. Yes, yes. He’s one of my… yeah. Sure.”
“Do you want me to go find him for you?”
I really thought hard at this point; I’m not quite sure what Ethan would be able to do for me. As I thought this, I could feel my breathing begin to slow a little bit.
“I do have one thing that you could do for me.” I looked up at her from the soothing concrete slab, and she seemed nice and not as afraid as I had imagined at first. It was like when we often crashed the bathroom on her and her suitemates in the early morning. They were seniors, so both of them had their own bedrooms but had to share a bathroom with a bunch of sophomores. “Would you mind just sitting down here with me for a second? I think it’s anxiety or something. I kind of feel my breathing and heart… uh, heart rate get better.” I thought about lifting to a sitting position, but my heart didn’t agree.
“Is that a pick-up line?” She said with an absolute deadpan that would have made any comedienne jealous.
“No, no, not a pick-up line at all.”
“Boy, you really are kind of sick, huh? That was a joke.”
“Oh, I get it.” Again, I lied.
“Sure, I’ll sit down with you.” She sat on the floor criss-cross applesauce without even leaning on the wall, like a circus performer.
“Wow, that was impressive.”
I raised myself part way up before I felt my heart on its horse again; I then lowered myself back down.
“No need to get up on my account.”
“I’m just having a very hard time with my equilibrium.”
“Do you guys do a lot of drugs?”
“No, no, not at all.”
“Really?” She didn’t believe it.
“I don’t have money to waste on stuff like that. Occasionally, with friends, socially.”
“Man, those are a lot of qualifiers,” she twirled her pearls around a bit, like a nervous habit.
“I just don’t do that stuff a lot.”
“A lot?”
“So, what’s wrong with you? Anxiety, you said?”
“Probably.” Again, the calming returned. I could feel myself being better. She was good at disarming conversation. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Learn what?” Twirl, twirl, she did with her pearls.
“How to calm people down. You are doing that. I can tell. The more you listen and talk.”
“My boyfriend back home calls me the human Quaalude.”
I laughed.
“I’m not sure exactly, but it is a party trick that I have.”
I sat up bolt-upright without any repercussions from my heart.
“Thank you, uh. Blaine, right?” I said, blink-blinking.
“Brook.”
“Sorry, I thought it was…”
“I know, I know, just some rich preppy White girl’s name. Brook. Blaine. Bea-A-Trish.”
“I’m glad you said it and not me,” I guffawed. I’m glad that I wasn’t drinking some kind of liquid because it would definitely come out of my nose. Luckily, I just snorted a little snot, which I wiped away quickly.
“What’s your name?” She stuck out her hand.
“Schaeffer.” I took her hand and shook it solemnly, like from the “Our Gang” serials. “Please to meet you, Brook,” I said too deliberately, like I was Helen Keller learning to make sounds.”
I could see her Athena-grey eyes at this point. They, along with the rest of her face, were open and accepting.
“I usually only see the back of you and your roommate as you dart out of the bathroom.”
“Oh, that. Megan and I…. Megan is the other one of us that you probably have a hard time telling us apart ‘cause we all look alike.”
“Look, I never said that,” I laughed. But she had definitely nailed me and my own stereotypes of nice White girls from the South.
“I know your type, uh huh.” For a second, she had an attitude like that of one of the girls that I had grown up with.
“Where are you from again? Texas, right.”
“Now that’s my disguise and what I would have you believe. In reality, I am a spy living with some well-meaning family up in…” She looks around as if we could be overheard, “…Trumbull, Connecticut.”
“No! What about the pearls, white sweaters, and cowboy boots?”
“There are just leftovers from those people I was just telling you about wanting to be oil millionaires. In reality…, “ she gave a long pause. “In reality, we are trust fund millionaires from Connecticut.”
I mouthed a dramatic “Nooooooo.”
We sat that way for what seemed like an hour. She then put a hand under my arm and helped me to my feet. Just like she had been talking to a small child. My heart rate was nearly back to normal, and I felt better than I had felt in a long time.
What Brook was doing was leaving the TV room where she watched re-runs of “I Love Lucy” and “Hazel.” She said it calmed her. Now that Pierson had cable TV, which was controlled by a long narrow box the shape of a good-sized man’s shoe, we could all watch a little TV whenever we wanted.
That day was a revelation because it sort of represented my entire sophomore year. Yes, I did a couple of plays. Both of which I was pretty proud of. I stopped going to Theater Studies class and received two Fs for my efforts. True story, I kid you not. I got two Fs in a class that most people would consider the guttiest of the guts. The easiest class in the entire Blue Book. Fail.
My teacher, she of the self-referential talk, wrote a long-ish type-written letter — in flippin’ May — to call me to her office to discuss why I had stayed on the roster for the entire year but never bothered to show up. I had no answer for her. So, I didn’t show up. I earned two Fs and was placed on academic probation. Again, I wonder if Abner had been around, or someone like Abner, if I would have tanked so badly. I wasn’t an infant, so I took my lumps. And they were some mighty big lumps.
After that time, I had a different focus for myself. I refined the mantra that I would repeat for the remaining two years. It was: Completion. That’s it. Completion. It didn’t really matter what it looked like as long as I could say I was done with it all at the end of the two years. It wouldn’t matter at all. I would be done with the entire Yale and New Haven experience and never set foot back in the region as long as I lived. Now, I wasn’t certain about that. I had two more years to get through. In the end, I would want to figure out what the hell it was all about. I certainly was no Nick Carraway. And I damn sure wasn’t a Jay Gatz. Wherever the best minds of my generation were marching off to, I was headed in the opposite direction. Double-time doing the quick step.
One thing I was grateful for at the end of my second year was that I didn’t have to have my roommates clean vomit up from my locked room since I was never granted a single. I left with everybody else.
In the end, Oliver moved on, we didn’t really connect at all. The next year I would room with Ethan and Ari. Ethan from Manhattan and Ari from Santa Monica. In addition to the Fs, I did receive my first A in Skip Gates’ class, Black Women and Their Fiction. However, I wasn’t sure if that A wasn’t given to me by the TA because I flattered her without end, mainly because I had the hots for her, so I wasn’t sure if I truly had earned the grade. It’s funny how that was, right? In one class, I received two Fs, knowing that I had fully earned them. It took a lot of work and avoidance to get those grades. While in the other class, I had no idea if I actually deserved the grade. Maybe I did. My filter of authentic discernment was now cracked.
My mind was a rococo and labyrinthine work of art, kind of like Al Jarreau’s “[Round, Round, Round] Blue Rondo a La Turk,” which I listened to on hyper repeat on Ethan’s turn table and rack system in our room. That is how it worked, or rather didn’t work. What a tyranny of my own oppressive thinking. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the last time that anxiety got the better of me, nailing my ass to the floor, but I had found something different and better this time around. I found that I could fail and survive. That kindness did come in the form of certain strangers.
Brook and I saw each other in the dining hall almost every night. We would smile very deeply and warmly at each other. That was it. We didn’t have a thing. I wasn’t really attracted to her. Okay, well, maybe a little. And, she wasn’t attracted to me, I think. We just had this thing one night down in the steam tunnels not too far from our dorm rooms between the Pierson Buttery and the new TV room. That’s what the randomness of college life was all about. So many more of these encounters would occur like a blur, which the last two years of college became–a fast-moving express train that passed people on the platform waiting for the local.
With that, I got on a plane a day after my last final. I flew Roanoke Airlines again, hopscotching across the Southeast and Midwest, landing at Midway. Mama picked me up. I noticed how much smaller she looked as I saw her for the first time since Christmas. Smaller and a little more vulnerable than the last time I had seen her drop me off at the near identical spot. Our lives were like that, weren’t they? They were filled with notions of ourselves being the same while the people around us got smaller, shrinking by the minute before our very imaginations—out of sight.
[The next Chapter of B.C.Y.: A Novel drops on February 7, 2025, in two weeks, which is serialized at ANEW every other Friday. Spread the word and (re-)read from the beginning: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5. Tell a friend. Drink some water. Take your meds. Pet a dog. See you soon.]