Entry Three

I had been going to a college across town from the one I had started at for about two months when I started to make my first friend.  He was a kind of person that I had come to believe didn’t exist anymore.  He would find me sitting on campus and sit down and talk to me.  Of course, I responded to him like I did to anyone else, with a cold forward stare and an utter lack of expression.  Somehow he didn’t seem to mind.  He just liked being the person to keep me company when no one else would.

I’ve heard people who don’t care if you talk, people who talk at you and only care that you listen.  You would think that that sort would like me because I would never interrupt their single minded banter.  However, just the opposite was true, they hated me because I didn’t pretend to care or even acknowledge their existence.  Sure, they would try to talk to me when we first ran into each other, because they thought as you would that a silent partner would be the best thing for them.  But, something, they hadn’t realized about themselves is that it was more their prerogative to have someone to hang on every word or at the very least nod.  I was the antithesis of even nodding back at them.  They hated that and became the closest thing I had to enemies.

When I first met him, I thought he would be the same, and I dreaded seeing him because the only thing I needed less than enemies was friends.  I realized when he didn’t just walk away that he wasn’t just in this to hear himself talk but because he didn’t mind talking for the two of us if that’s what it took for us to have a conversation.

And that made him even more dangerous, so, finally, in the exact middle of a sentence I walked away, as if he had never been there at all.  He brushed it off and said “well, I guess I’ll see you later then.”

Eventually, I learned never to sit down.  

And, he in turn learned that since I wouldn’t stop for him he had to follow to have our “conversations”.  Of course, by the time he figured all that out I was getting into tremendous shape from walking from sun up til sun fall.  So, to deter this kind of behavior, I started taking the stairs as soon as I saw him.  By which I mean all the stairs I could find, up down repeat.  He just couldn’t keep up my pace.  He panted, gasped and moaned even, but between each was words; more and more every day, an ever changing litany of speech.  By the end of my first year there though, he was in better shape than I, thanks to his attending track meets so that he could keep up.  One of the last days of the year, I had climbed every tower of stairs the school offered to try to keep him behind, but as I kept picking up the pace I was the one to burn out first.  I collapsed on a landing he scooped me up and propped me against a wall.  

That’s when he caught up enough to catch me smiling.  It wasn’t that I enjoyed the talking aspect, it was the chase that excited me.  The ritual of it.

He lent me a shoulder for balance and took me down the elevator to the cafeteria.  Of course, he asked if he could do this and since I couldn’t say no, and was too weak to walk away I just went with the flow.  

We sat by a window.  By then, my strength had started to return and when I server came by I had the energy to slide a card across the table in his direction.  The server knew the drill though he was a bit shaken to see that I had company.  This gave my new friend enough time to pick up the card and read it aloud to the server.  My face lit up in surprise when I heard him read my order aloud.  I couldn’t remember the last time something like this had happened, the last time I had heard what I wanted.  I think I glared at him.  He smile back, taking pleasure in seeing the first chips in my façade.

When our server left to get our orders he said, “so this is how you do it, huh?”  in his hand he held the card.  I snatched it away from him, letting only the controlled action show any signs of anger.  “Pretty smooth.  Think you could talk like this?  Flash cards or something.  Pictures, common words, phrases, questions, something like that?”

It was always remarkable to see the familiar college cafeteria turned into a thrashing punk disco.  Perhaps more remarkable was the fact that we did this every Saturday night at about 10:00.  Liberal arts college, f**k yeah!  They didn’t give a s**t.  In fact, Professor Hinson, who taught music appreciation organized the whole thing, as long as our frat had the place clean by Sunday’s breakfast.

Now there was a crowd of jumping students and sloshing beer standing in front of the pit of chairs that separated the band from the thrashing fans.  I would hate to be the guy with the mop tonight.  I grabbed a beer from the table behind me and slammed it even though it had been warm for some time.  I chucked the glass bottle across the room where it smashed against the far wall, behind where the band was set up.  

The smash of the bottle was the match that lit the powder keg.  The whole place was about to blow and I could feel it.  I could feel the shockwave before the impact as it flowed through us all.  I howled in excitement as I channeled the chaos and jumped up and down through the crowd toward the multiple mosh pits at the front of the crowd.   The vocalist kicked a chair out into the crowd.  A mosh pit shifted and changed to accommodate the flying object and it skidded across the slick cafeteria floor until it came to rest at a partygoer’s feet.  He took the chair and returned it to the other side of the room via air mail.  It landed about where the bottle had, narrowly missing the drummers head.  Best thing about it was nobody cared, this was a normal Saturday night.  Oh, and the guy, that was my close friend, Bob Dylan, a real Saturday night hell raiser.

That fundamental question woke me from my daydream.  It even broke my conception of my own reality.  That was scary.  It  brought me back into reality in a way that I hadn’t even considered in years, and that, in addition to the fact that I was stuck sitting across from this man I had vowed to never to sit next to again made me deeply uncomfortable.  Uncharacteristically, I began to squirm in my seat, albeit subtly.  

Why didn’t I just leave?  Well, I’ve asked myself the same question a dozen time since with no reply.  The truth is I was hungry and tired and I didn’t feel like fighting anymore.  Also, if I were to get up and walk away just because he had made me uncomfortable, that would be admitting defeat.  But, in a rational sense, I had already been defeated.  When I allowed this man to change my habits, to force me to react to his actions, that was as much an expression of my feelings as if I had just returned conversation.

It felt as if he had smacked me in the face with a hammer and my mask that I used to hide my face from the world had been broken.  I could already feel it cracking and chipping away.  And as much as that was a scary prospect, it was also an enlightening one.  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I wanted my old life back, from before I started college, when I was actually happy, and not just “not sad”.  Back when the girl from the hallway at my first college and I would spend entire nights lost in conversation.  Right at that moment I became suddenly aware of a fact that I had known all along and had been obvious for at least the last year, yet was something that, until this moment, I had refused to accept.

I still loved her, perhaps every bit as much as I always had.  So when I had actually had my chance, why had I run away?

There was nowhere to run.  No use in being scared once you were inside.  There were bodies thrashing all around you and there was nothing you could do to separate yourself from them.  We were all one in the pit.  We had to be.  This is exactly why I loved these shows so much.

So why, if I love it so much, am I wrecking things and generally trying to start a small riot?  Because, I, as well as Bob, are members of Phi Life, the club that organizes these events and cleans up after them.  And it’s not even close to a thankless job, in fact, Bob and I are legends in this crowd.  We were the ones who brought the punk rock loving club back from the ashes of the late 90’s music scene.  If It hadn’t been for our mutual love of the zen that can only be found in the pit, this scene may have never started back up.  

There was a room full of grateful punks.  Beyond the acquaintances, there were my friends weaving through the crowd and thrashing through the pit.  Of course, I couldn’t forget Kurt, our drug liaison, who spent at least a third of each show in the bathrooms avoiding what cameras hadn’t been ripped from the walls in protest.  Then there was Miguel, who was an American punk loyalist who always stood out in a crowd.  Even if It hadn’t been for his purely ridiculous mohawk, he still looked a good six inches over most party goers.  And he was even more imposing in the pit; people usually thinned out when he came to thrash, but if you ever took the time to jam with him you’d soon realize that inside the dominating giant was a force of spiritual energy you don’t feel in most people.  Of everyone here, he may have been the most alive.

I felt like I wanted to die.  How had I let all of this slip through my fingers when I had the chance to get the good life back?  Shame.  I felt proud of what I had become, but inside I knew no one understood the depths I had taken a social rebellion.  None of them could appreciate it.  But in front of them I didn’t care, or so I thought.  

When our eyes met the painful façade came crashing down and the world I had known for two years started to die.  This man sitting across from me wasn’t beating a dead horse, but pulling the trigger with old Yeller at the end of the barrel.  She had wounded me, twice now; he was going to put me out of my misery.

I pulled out my wallet and searched for something I always kept there, just in case I needed it.  It was a laminated card that said quite simply, “Chicken”.  Everyone’s interpretation of “I want chicken” is different, so this was my wild card.  In this context, I just wanted him to know I was afraid.  This time I was afraid that I would become that sad little boy she had left in her wake again; a boy to whom eternal silence was a grateful exchange not to have to feel the pain of her rejection.  

I was the chicken.  Almost three years ago, I had just chickened out on society and ran away.  Ran deep inside myself and locked the door.

The cylinders made a satisfying click as the door to the mausoleum locked.

“So, you want a party?”  I turned to ask my friend.  “Well, That I can do.”  It was just a matter of calling up my Phi Life buddies from college and some of the people who came to the Saturday night bashes.  People, beer, I could do all of that if I set my mind to it.  Entertainment might be a little trickier but, I was sure that I knew enough of the old punk bands lineup’s that I could find at least one that was still performing.  If worse came to worse, I could just mix and match whoever was willing to bring instruments and make a f*****g band.

In response, my friend gave me an odd look.  He didn’t quite see how the wheels were turning in my head.

He puzzled over the card for the rest of the meal.  He never quite understood what I meant by that, even after that day.  At least he understood the gesture well enough not to ask our server for “some chicken”.  After the meal I went directly home, completely ignoring my next class.  I had cards to make.  I had an experiment to perform.  I had a life to take back.