Some were less warm than I’d remembered (I was in her first class when she started teaching two years ago and she’s not giving me a hug? What gives??). Others had to dart out as they simply didn’t have the time (the twins are great but we’ve got a doctors appointment, I gotta run). But then there were the ones who really cared, and when they were able to put their grading aside, even just for a few minutes, it was great.
I took a class with Ed Gillin just once: a senior seminar my last semester of college. It was a seven-person-overly-informal-two-and-a-half-hour-Monday-afternoon experience. The topic was Henry David. We'd one text – the collected works – and covered all of Walden, as well as bits and pieces of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, and the like. We spent an entire session talking about the concept of “a natural day,” and Ed was looking to develop a class devoted to works of travel-log. Naturally he was stoked about my trip.
“You going by
car?”
“Nope. Can’t
afforded one. Buses, trains,
ride-shares, couch-surfing, and a backpack.”
“So you’re really doing it.”
“Yep.”
“Are you writing
about it?”
“I’m keeping a
journal. No real prose. Just a bullet-pointed itinerary of days events.”
“Good.”
When the proverbial bell rang Ed was
off to class and I was off to breakfast (as one is want to call the first meal
of the day, 2pm or not). I decided on Taco Bell, one of the few
corporate entities that had weaseled it’s way onto campus. I sat on the balcony
of the two-tiered Mary Jemison dining
hall, student-watching and flipping through the campus newspaper.
I was fed up. An heroic road-trip had
turned into a reprieve of college. I’d seen all the teachers and friends I’d
wanted to, beheld all the sights, done the few things the town had to offer.
Geneseo was beyond played out. Shit, it’d been played out two years ago. And four
nights??? If I was spending half a week reliving the past, I’d be an asshole if
I spent less time in newer lands. It was moving too slow, and not (yet) in a
good way.
I called Teresa. We’d been in touch,
but had yet to make a definitive plan.
“Yo. What’s up? Are we on for
tomorrow??”
“Yes! I got the day off work. I can be
in Geneseo by 11. Where am I picking you up?”
“I’m staying on Orchard”
“Cool. I’ll give you a ring when I get
into town.”
“Excellent! See you tomorrow.”
I was hella relieved. I had an escape
plan, and I could breath a little easier. But I still had nothing to do. So it
was back up to Milne Library, where my favorite chair was yet again vacant. I put
my shoulderbag down, headed to the reference computer, and punched in Guthrie.
Bound for Glory wasn’t
in the stacks, but I did find a raged, packet-thin book of some collected
letters. I took it back to the chair and started to read. The text was
typewriter punched and faded, and I couldn’t handle the choppy read for much
more than fifteen minutes. [But that first taste of the man’s folksy prose held
me over until Minneapolis, where I finally picked up a perfectly sized
soft-cover edition of the autobiography (from an anarchist bookstore. Of
course.)]
When I put the booklet down I picked
up Compulsion, the novel I was
weaving my way through. In short turn I put that aside, took out my MP3 player,
and slid in my ear-buds. I made a playlist of my favorite Woody covers and
stared out the window towards the hills on the western horizon.
My phone rang.
“Sarcophagus. What’s up?”
“Not much. Just got outta class. I’m
headed to Brodie to work on the show
if ya wanna come help out.”
“Sweet. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
For her senior
project, Sarcophagus was teching Museum,
a show I can’t tell you about because I never saw it. But I was more
than happy
to be put to work. I did a little bit of focusing, a little bit of
schmoozing, and more than my fair share of giving Johnnie grief.
When Sarcophagus
hade to return to class, I headed up to the liquor store and grabbed myself a 375 of Jack Daniel’s. From then on,
rare was the moment I was found without a small bottle tucked in the folds of
the towel at the top of my backpack (for the times when bars and basement beers
were out of reach).
It was Sidney’s
sophomore year in the valley, so we’d never actually overlapped during college. I’d
met her a few months prior at Berkshire Hills Emmanuel Camp. With summer camp
deep in my blood (a lifetime of Kinderland) I’d been offered a
compelling opportunity to work at BHEC. I took it, and it was terrible.
Abominable. An experience so absurd and dismal it’d be worthy of it’s own
separate blog if I hadn’t repressed all the memories. But Sidney was cool, and
I told her I’d look her up next time I was Geneseostyles. A sweet Jewish girl
with Ginger attributes and cute suitemates, I hung out in her dorm and sipped
whisky while we reminisced about the horrors of the summer and watched tv. I
might’ve also stuffed my face with chocolate-covered pretzels her
suitemates offered me. When I left the dorm it was dark.
On a Thursday
night in Geneseo there were few places as secluded as the track, so it was
there I went to smoke. Anyone who knows me knows I’m no runner (I ran once. It
was from the cops at a party in high school. They weren’t actually there). But
the Geneseo track held a significance nonetheless . On late and stressful nights
my sophomore year I’d coast my bike down the hill, slip on my headphones, and
zip around the motherfucker for a good forty minutes. Nary a soul was there,
and I’d fly, staring at the stars, gulping brisk winter air, and clearing my
head.
I walked down the slope on the western
edge of the track, leaned against the fence, and lit up.
I was at the opposite end of campus,
so the walk up to Main Street took a good fifteen minutes. Once arrived, I
sauntered into The Vital. The bouncer gave me a nod of approval as he caught
wind of the scent while glancing at my I.D. The bar was fairly crowded due
to the thirsty Thursday crowd. I had a few beers, made conversation with strangers,
and remembered why my fonder memories of the town were set well outside the
bars.
Feeling good and
loose I went out for an aimless walk around town. A couple blocks up Center Street I ran into a girl I vaguely
knew sitting with friends on a couch on a cramped porch. In my overly
friendly state, I gave an exuberant “Hey! What’s up?” The ensuing conversation
was of substantial awkwardness but little consequence. I continued on.
It was getting
late and I thought about calling it, but as I sauntered down the street I saw 5
Main and the apartment (3) I’d lived in my senior year. I had a sudden urge to
get inside, see who was there and what they’d done with the place. But it was
midnight on a Thursday, and I didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious alum.
As I got nearer,
I saw the door open. There was some commotion, and people stepped onto the
porch. I walked into the parking lot. A party maybe?? Was I in luck? But before
I reached the steps I herd a voice of outgoing proportions directed towards me
from above.
“Hey dude! What’s
up?”
I looked up.
There was a girl sitting on the roof above the porch, having apparently climbed
out the window of the second floor apartment.
“Um. Not too
much. How’re you doing?”
“Me? I’m Goooood!”
She was far too
loud and friendly to be sober.
“Do you know
her?” I whispered to the people who’d stepped out of my old, ground-floor
apartment. By now it was clear that there was no party in #3 but rather a
reaction to a party in #6.
“Yeah,” one said
“she was throwing loves of stale bread from up there the other night. Dented my
fuckin’ car.”
“What’s you’rrrre
name?” we heard from above.
“I’m Isaac. And
yours?”
“Nice to meet you
Isaac. What brings you to Main Street this lovely evening??”
I glanced at the
kids on the porch, whom nameless roof-girl couldn’t see. They rolled their
eyes.
“Well, I actually
lived in this house a few years ago. I’m taking a roadtrip and decided to stop
in Geneseo for a few days”
“Cooooool! Didn’t
you LOVE college??”
“Yeah…it was
pretty fun….…are you sure you should be on the roof? I don’t know how safe it
is up there.”
“I’m fine! I’ve
been out here plenty of times. Totally safe. Look.”
She stood up and
started prancing around her self-proclaimed balcony.
“No, no. It’s
cool I believe you. But you’re being kind of loud. It’s pretty late. You know
the president of the college lives right there, right?” I pointed across the
parking lot to the yellow mansion on the other side.
“Chris can suck my dick!”
The kids on the
porch started getting anxious.
“Look.
I really think you should go inside.”
“Fuck you man.
You’re not my mother! I thought we were cool. What gives?!?”
A face poked out
from the window that let onto the roof. “Lindsey, get your drunk ass inside!”
“Nah man. This
kid wants to fight!”
“You should
probably listen to your friends” I said.
She spat at me.
But in her state, the dribble didn’t make it off the roof.
“Girl! Get ya ass
over here!” A few hands lunged out of the window. And with a brief struggle and
a little more shouting she was pulled through the window, and all was calm.
“Nice girl.” I
said to the kids on the porch.
“They provide
some excitement. I think they’re all gay. Confused the shit outta my mom when
she came to visit. Playing rugby in the backyard, jumping all over each other
in sports bras.”
“Gotchya” I said.
“That makes some sense” as I thought back to the incidents of utter
shitshowiness my rugby friends had perpetrated.
“Hey. Mind if I
come in for a sec? I used to live here and I’d love to check out the pad if
it’s not too much of an intrusion.”
“Sure. Come on
in.”
The apartment was
too small to be laid out substantially different from when I’d lived there. There
was a tv in a corner where we’d had none, and a few chairs had shifted
positions. But all looked relatively familiar. They still had the futon I’d reluctantly
left, passed down to me from an upperclassman of my generation. (I refrained
from letting them know the extent to which various – well, pretty much all –
bodily fluids had been cleaned off it).
I spent a good
two hours talking to the girls who now lived there, telling the one who resided
in my room how she’d want to invest in a space heater before winter set in, and
sharing numerous stories of my wild
college years. The conversation came to a lull around 2am, and I made my
exit.
Being my final
night in the valley I thought it best to take in a bit more Livingston County
air, so I crossed Court Street and walked to the soccer fields next to the Armory - a grassy area of fond memory where
I’d once taught friends how to play spaceman six years ago. I found a bench and
finished off the spliff I’d started down by the track.
I rambled down
the hill back to Sarcophagus’, but was still not quite ready to crash once I
reached Orchard Street. I snuck under the chain at the end of the road, and
wandered around Highland, the
low-income community complex where students weren’t allowed to live. It was a
part of town I’d never seen before.
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