| |  A year ago I was a misunderstood filmmaker; two years ago I was such a sap I decided to start a band with my [then-six-year-old] brother; and three years ago I found out the girl I liked already had a boyfriend. It is very convenient having all of these important life milestones laid out for me - on the Internet, no less. I realize that I've been doing this for over three years now, save for the past four months, where I more or less fell off the face of the Earth.
Tonight after midnight, I walked down to CVS to buy some soap. It is exam week; a lot of people have 8 a.m. exams tomorrow morning, and College Park is dead. It is depressing, and I didn't see a single person until I left campus. Everyone seemed to be at CVS, in line for Red Bull. On the way back, I decided to walk past Allegany Hall, a dorm with these huge leafy bushes in front of it. "Hello!" said a voice from the foliage. "Uh, hey," I said, moving closer, trying to make out the figure squatting on the ground. Maybe it was somebody I knew.
I saw she was holding a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I figured she probably wasn't talking to me. Then I heard the trickle of water, and noticed the dark puddle on the ground between her legs. She wasn't laughing or crying; she wasn't humiliated or proud, but maybe surprised. And so it's come to this, I could see her thinking.
"I'm in front of a dorm, peeing in the bushes," she said to the person on the other end, putting a cigarette to her lips. "And some guy is walking past."
I tried to walk faster. Three years in College Park and I've never seen a girl peeing in the bushes in front of a dorm while smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone. You'd think it happened every day here from the way she acted. I was horrified as a freshman, green about college and overly self-righteous about everything.
"Who's walking past?" she kept going. "Just some random-ass guy."
"Yo, tell her Dan Reed is walking by!" I yelled. She didn't hear me because she was still peeing, and I was embarrassed to have seen it.
These are the stories I will tell my kids one day, when they ask what college was like, and this mythical place called College Park, where even the night before 8 a.m. exams you can find people too drunk to enjoy God's gift of shame.
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| | Posted 12/15/2007 1:27 AM - 52 views - 0 comments
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