UCSC

I drive up to campus. At the guard gate I roll down the window, and the gatekeeper - an officer with a flashlight and a bored expression - asks me where I'm headed.

"Crown-Merrill apartments," I say. "Kurt called for me."

Usually he asks my name, and shouts it to his compadre, another bored officer stuffed into a booth. He is familiar with me and my van by now, though, and he just says "Go ahead," and jerks his flashlight up the road.

I'm a bit startled by his quick approval, but I don't argue, and press down the gas pedal slowly. It's the only way I can actually get the van moving from a stop. The driveshaft needs to ease into it's "forked up" position, instead of the "forked down" position it assumes when coasting. If I were to slam the pedal down from a parked position, at any time, I would probably break something. On the positive side, it gives me a good excuse to refuse to let anyone else drive my car, instead of admitting I'm just a control freak.

About halfway up the foggy road to the apartments, I've reached my cruising speed of 55mph. I spend the rest of the time slowing down. At about 35, a student on the sidewalk jerks as if to jump out in front of me, and my finger goes up before I even think about it. A few seconds later I realize he may not have been playing a prank, but by that time everyone who's seen my finger is far behind on the roadside. I probably shouldn't be so liberal with my hexes.

I slide into the ten-minute zone and tromp over to the farthest building in the complex. This particular set of rooms is the second-most remote apartment on the whole campus. Only the trailer park is more distant from the classrooms. No other dwelling is as far from a shuttle stop as this one is. My friends live in the boonies, but they've called their apartment "Party Central", because for some reason a great number of gatherings take place there.

This evening's gathering is a role-playing game, the old-school kind involving character sheets and dice. "Legend of the Five Rings" is the name. It's over by now, and the participants are itching to get off campus and ingest greasy food. Presto, here is my van.

At the top of three flights of steps I catch my breath for a few seconds and knock. I hear some yelling and a thud, and Kurt yanks open the door, six feet of long-haired flannel-clad mathematics genius, with a grin so wide you'd swear you could fit a coffee saucer in his mouth. In a Monty-Python "Mr. Gumby" voice he hoots "HEY ga-RAAAAAAAAT!", and I respond with "HEYYY KuUUUUUUUUURT!" and plow into him.

Beyond Kurt there is a woman lying on the floor, making very erotic noises. Levis and a black t-shirt, pale skin and straight black hair with bangs, gracefully curved body -- It's Danielle, and the dungeon-master Rob is digging his fingers into her back. She sounds like she's on the verge of an orgasm. Ken sits on the couch, reading a fantasy novel propped on his leg, which is propped sideways on his other leg. He's got his trademark black sport coat on, which combines with his white shirt and tennis shoes for a fashion statement that says - to me at least - "I'm here on loan from Cambridge to class this UCSC joint up a little." When I think of college friends, and study halls, and good-natured pranks in dorm hallways, I think of Ken, wearing this outfit. I count him as one of my best friends.

These days, Ken and I have to work a bit harder to stay involved in campus life. I commute from Watsonville, and he works and lives off-campus and takes the bus up, after a hellish eight hour marathon behind the counter at a candy shop downtown. It's difficult to get the crew together, but worth it every time.

He looks up from his book at me. "Hey, chummer! Ready to eat?"

"Yep. Is everyone gathered here?"

I'd sent an ICQ message to him before I drove up, telling him to make some calls and see who else in our gang was up for a midnight snack.

"Don't know. Check with Kurt."

Kurt has gone to his room, so I aim for the hallway. Before I get there, Danielle looks up at me from the carpet and says "hi" in an uncharacteristically shy voice. We've been having conversations over ICQ, and I think she's started to like me - or at least know me as more than a stranger. Her smile, sideways on the rug under jet black hair, next to smooth brown eyes, is nice to see. I wave and enter the hallway.

Brian is here, wearing a trenchcoat. Brian is huge. Brian is grinning.

"Ah hah, there you are, you evil little man!" he says. He starts drifting towards me. His arms remain at his sides, and he is so wide and tall that the entire hallway is blocked.

"Hey, ya big lout. What's up?" I say.

"Bwahahahaa!" says Brian. He bumps into me.

I think he is attempting to crush me through the wall, but it could just be a hug. "Uh, I'm heading for Kurt's room. This is the wrong way, Brian."

"NONE SHALL PASS!" he bellows into my face.

Brian may smoosh me. His big curly beard is looming like a forest. I think fast.

"Haha, you're horny today, eh, Brian? Moving in for a kiss?"

"Eeergh!" says Brian, and leans back.

"Trying to get some action in the hallway, eh Brian? Oh," - I switch to my Frank N Furter voice - "Darling, I didn't know you liked me that way."

He hisses and pulls back.

I make my break for it, and zip around him.

Kurt's room is relatively secure, but before I enter it I spot Neil leaning in the door to Cassie's room. Neil remains mostly unchanged in his two years at UCSC. He still wears the same blue jacket, has the same bowl haircut, and seems to have the same fully-formed personality. Polite, precise, well-researched; I see him as one of those rare people that always acts under a strong set of principles but never tries to impose those principles on others. He is going to do interesting stuff in the future, I bet -- get access to things and places that people usually don't, and find ways to improve them.

I pull myself back out of my own head, and ask him if he wants to come to Denny's. He says he has to catch a bus home. I offer to give him a ride there, since I need to pick up his sister from the same apartment. He says that would be fine if I'm willing to wait a few minutes while he visits a friend. I agree, and he accepts.

He's leaning in the door to Cassie's room because there's no floorspace inside. Cassi has boxes open on every available surface, and is trying to organize her possessions while talking with Neil. I wave hello to her and make a left-turn, and pass into Kurt's domain.

Kurt's room has a well-organized desk with a computer on it, an unmade bed, a leaning bookshelf, and half a dozen packed boxes crammed against a wall. He's standing near the desk, talking intently on the phone. I can tell he's on the phone because the curly wire runs from the cradle on the desk up into his tangle of hair and vanishes there.

His hair frames his huge cranium. If you concentrate, you can see a hundred thousand yin-yangs twirling around his skull.

He's trying to convince Milo to come with us to Denny's. I sit down at the computer and send a message to Liz, telling her to come over in 15 minutes if she wants to go out. Just as I finish, Kurt shoves the phone into my hand and walks out of the room. In a fragmented electronic blast, Milo asks me if he should walk to the apartment from the Applied Sciences building, or wait there for us to pick him up. Since I've got some time to wait for Neil, I tell him to come over here, and hang up.

Liz has responded to my ICQ, but in the negative - she has to study. My business in Kurt's room concluded, I pass around Neil and into Cassi's room.

Neil has left for the living room, so it's just me and Cassi. "Hi there!" I say.

"Oh hi, it's you! I'm still unpacking here. Look at all this stuff, huh? Actually I bet you'd like to see what I just unpacked. Check it out..." She shows me several old books of Chinese fables, with painted illustrations. Her belongings are quite diverse, I suspect she has everything she owns in this room, not just a supply of college gear.

She's wearing ripped bluejeans and a white t-shirt. Her eyes are bright behind her rectangular glasses. Her tangly brown hair falls to her elbows, and she brushes it aside with freckled, muscular forearms as she shows me other books. French bedtime stories, Russian fairy tales. The illustrations are captivating. "Ooo, and I just unpacked my scanner, but it's covered in stuff already!" she grins.

There are papers scattered all over her bed. Both windows are covered in heavy curtains; her irregular sleep patterns demand protection from the sun. A floorlamp provides a steady stream of warm light. A gigantic poster of a white wolf is tacked up behind her computer desk. I turn around and am astonished to see another wolf - this one a painting - seven feet tall and eight feet wide, claiming the entire opposite wall. Her bed is pushed in front of it. Why the hell does she have a painting this big? I'm not ready to ask her yet.

Her room is a den. I give her a hug. She asks if she can come to Denny's with us and I nod. She squats on her heels, pulling scraps of paper from a box. That's her way. Just because we're talking doesn't mean she's going to stop intently doing whatever task she has in mind. I decide to head back to the living room, and step into the hallway.

Brian is here. He looks wacky.

Brian jabs me with a finger.

"Poke!" says Brian.

The hallway is entirely blocked again. I can't even see around him.

"Poke poke poke poke poke!" he says. He jabs me repeatedly, nearly driving me into a wall.

"Alright, that's enough, Brian."

"Never enough, silly man!" cackles Brian. "Prepare for poking!"

I think fast. "Sweetheart. First you wanna make out, now you wanna give me a poke."

Brian scowls.

"I'm ready any time, but ... in a hallway, well, that's not romantic. Can we move to your bedroom instead?"

"Yeeeegh!" he says, and drifts backwards away from me. I think he's trying to float like an old-school vampire, but the effect is ruined by his heavy shoes. As he moves around the corner he says, "Don't think you've won!!"

As soon as the space clears I walk into the living room again.

Danielle is still on the carpet. Rob is taking a break and massaging his fingers. Kurt is sprawled on the bed, a queen-size with messy sheets, next to the couch. I'm not sure why they have a bed in their living room. I jump onto it and tickle Kurt.

Danielle, her head turned the other way to face me, gives me another wave and says "hi." Then Rob sets back into her, and she resumes her erotic groaning from earlier. A few thoughts flit through my head: Is she actually paying more attention to me, or am I just completely imagining it? I don't think she's ever said "hi" to me before, let alone twice in fifteen minutes. But I know men can really easily mistake simple politeness for something flirty.

Plus, she's got Rob. He's a good-looking fellow. Seems to have good manners too, and intimate enough to give that college staple: the back massage. Maybe this is just about Danielle gathering new friends. Or maybe, this is about Danielle gathering more friends who are also potential love interests. Staking more territory in the tribe of nerds. Come to think of it, I know four other guys who are pursuing her already. So perhaps it's not all in my own head ... just crafted by her to seem that way. Ah yes. Plausible deniability. I'm already really familiar with this.

Well, I'm thinking about her, so her tactics obviously work. She certainly knows the right noises. She closes her eyes and says " ... urrnhh ..."

I glance at Brian and see his ears turn red from the sound. He really is feeling hormonal this evening.

Rob moves a hand under Danielle's shirt, tracing on her lower back, and notices several knots he hadn't felt before. He announces this to her.

"So just take the shirt off!" she says. "I'm sure everyone in this room has seen me naked at some point anyway."

That's true. Rocky Horror, and all that.

"I don't know if I really need to," says Rob. "I can probably get these knots right now."

"For god's sake, man!" yells Brian, his eyes bugging. "If she wants to take her shirt off then by all means, let her!!"

"Good to know the sentiment of the peewee gallery." I say, cryptically.

Linda dances into the room and strikes a pose. "So then! Off we go!" she shouts. She's decked out in an airy aquamarine dress and a dense cotton wrap curled up across it, with a dancers' tights beneath, accessorized with a handbag and sneakers.

"Oh, hey, Linda!" says Ken. "Coming with?"

She sticks her elbows out in a proud conquistador stance. "You bet!"

"Alright, enough waiting around." I say. "Let's get going."

Brian spreads his arms and says "Moooooo!", and begins jostling everyone towards the front door. Someone thinks fast, and actually opens the door, so we aren't all crushed. That man is big.

Outside we split into two groups, and Neil walks alongside Cassi, who follows me. I put one arm around Cassi and the other around Neil and say "Aaaaaah, friends!" All part of my plan. When they're walking in sync, and away from others, I release them both and run ahead to meet Kurt. Cassi wanted to walk with me, but I have arranged for Neil to be alone with Cassi for a few moments instead. I suspect it's something he's been wanting because the "friend" he talked about visiting was her. Has he got a bit of a crush?

Kurt and I hop on one leg for awhile, burning some energy to counteract the chilly coastal air, and try to find Milo. After a while we give up and cram into the van, and just as I'm about to pull out of the ten-minute space (which I've been in for close to an hour), Milo comes screaming up the walk. We slide open the door and the van eats him, then crawls off at 25 miles per hour for Denny's. I can't drive it any faster with so many people inside, because the brakes really suck.

Seriously. The brakes are so incredibly bad, and I've recoiled in horror and started composing my epitaph so many times while careening up to the asses of other cars, that I have actually been waking up from regular nightmares about being unable to stop this van.

I queue up Wierd Al. Kurt, Ken, Brian, and Milo all start singing "Dare To Be Stupid". Neil, Linda, and Cassi don't know the words but they do their best. Kurt is sitting on the cooler, facing the back, with the others ringed around him. All they need is a campfire. We get through a large portion of "Weird Al in 3-D", drop off Neil in exchange for Colleen, and pick up Chris.

At Denny's we sit around three small tables pushed together in the middle of the restaurant. Brian has a very enlightened conversation with the waitress about forensics and sociopaths. I order a chicken salad. Ken and I order vanilla cokes, and when he finishes his I pass mine down the table to him, so we both get fresh ones when the waitress returns.

Hijinks ensue. Linda sings a song about the lowly hedgehog, which is safe onboard navy vessels, because it "cannot be buggered at all". She passes around a miniature hedgehog named John Thomas, and Colleen fondles it while she waits for her food. Ken discusses the best way to adapt a musical to resemble a Hitchcock mystery, with all the lagging scenes and idiosyncracies of the worst in the legacy.

Cassi and Kurt wrestle. Chris points out that they're cute together, because their long hair sticks, and mingles when they pull their heads apart. I ask Brian, "What do you think of the humanist philosophy?", and instantly he responds with "It's alright but I think its big problem is that anyone can endorse an absolute moral code which cannot be refuted under the jurisdiction of humanism, so in practice you tend towards chaos."

I sit and digest that for a bit. Kurt tells everyone about his puppet project. He's going to make a video for the song "Doctor Worm", using sock puppets. The title character will be a worm behind a miniature drumset. Milo makes a pyramid of jam packages, then a reproduction of Stonehenge, then a bowing alley. I scan Brian with the toy "Gaydar" program on my PalmPilot, and he comes up as "Free parking ... In Rear". Cassi consumes her third cup of coffee.

Eventually we run out of things to laugh at, and start passing around the receipt so everyone can initial their food. A big pile of money appears on the table, and I scoop it all up except for 10 dollars, and bill the food to my credit card. Better than an ATM.

On the way back up to campus I deposit Colleen, Ken, and Chris. We get through four more Weird Al songs, and I am impressed by the high percentage of lyrics that the folks in the back have memorized. Someone announces that today is actually Weird Al's birthday, and that he's 41 years old.

I park in the ten-minute zone again. After a lot of tumbling around and grab-assery, everyone exits the van. I walk the remaining folks to the apartment, chat a bit, shake some hands, and call it an evening. Time to get back to work!!