Campus move-in and clothing shopping

[garote]

In the morning, Ken and I dropped Phaedra off at Mike's place on the UCSC campus. From Kresge we drove to the Merrill sub-college, and when we trudged up from the steep parking lot we found an orientation festival underway in the quad. Tents and tables and bunting ran in a ring around the taqueria, with students offering information on campus programs or shilling for clubs. Ken bought me a discount ticket for a trip to the Beach Boardwalk, and one for himself.

Beth was there, steering a table. She was feeling sick but still wanted to meet us at five, when she finished her duties. Ken talked with a smattering of other people I didn't know, and as I stood around gazing at the pageantry, I saw a tall fair-skinned girl with a long Egyptian face and piercing grey eyes, wearing a white fishing cap exactly like the ones my Dad and I wear camping. She walked past me and it was like bring drawn into a current. I had a compulsion to abandon my friends and just start following her around until I got a moment to talk to her. I restrained myself. This had happened to me a few times already on campus, and I was used to it now.

In the back of my head I thought: "I just bet there is an actual, non-trivial percentage of people on every campus, who meet up and get married and spend decades of their adult lives together, all because the girl walked by the guy in some college quad and the guy felt suddenly compelled to follow behind her."

I chastised myself for being such a sucker while Ken finished up his chit-chat. Finding nothing else to do at Merrill, we decided to take care of some more business. We went back to the van and drove down highway 1 to Ken's storage locker, midway between my house and the campus. He unlocked the outside door to the complex and we crept down spooky hallways of cement and washboard steel, to an undistinguished door in the back of the maze. Ken removed the lock and slid the door up to reveal a tangled pile of furniture, most of which I recognized from his dorm room last quarter. It was odd seeing it all crammed into this cube.

Ken started rummaging around, so I wandered the halls for a bit, then returned to the van. Soon he walked up with a microwave oven in his arms. "I wanted to return Beth's microwave," he said, "but hers is at the bottom of a huge pile, so I'm giving her mine for now." I nodded and we stuck it in the van.

That used up just enough time, and now we could pick up Phaedra. We jetted back to Kresge and knocked on Mike's door. He ushered us in and we relaxed for a while, swapping anecdotes and examining Mike's diverse and fastidious collection of toys and artwork. I was pretty sure he'd brought even more of his collection up from southern California, because a few months ago it had not taken up this much space. I took a long "nerd purity test" that Mike found on the local network, and got a score of "user", which I wasn't sure how to interpret. Eventually Mike had to leave for more RA duties, so he gave Phaedra a final smooch and herded us all back out onto the landing.

By then it was close to five o'clock, the time we were scheduled to meet Beth at her apartment, so we decided to drive to Merrill and deliver her microwave. I carried it through the quad and up the stairs to her room, with Ken showing the way, and Phaedra following up. We knocked on the door and one of Beth's roommates opened it. She indicated that we should be quiet, since Beth was still feeling ill and trying to take a nap, so we snuck in and I put the microwave on the counter.

There were now four people living in this apartment, instead of two. Apparently the housing crunch in the area had only gotten worse, and the campus management was cramming beds into the living rooms of apartments as well. In the place where Jen and Eszter used to sit on their couch and watch their tiny little TV on the table across the room, or do homework with papers spread across the floor, there was now a large bunkbed, divided off from the rest of the room by a flimsy curtain running from ceiling to floor. The curtain was currently drawn aside, showing a disorganized heap of luggage and appliances.

I looked at the carpet and remembered my first few nights there, sandwiched in the dark between blankets, alone and with someone else. Eszter. I shuffled briefly through a deck of memories. Her rounded, tomboyish face cast in silhouette against the ceiling by an arc of moonlight from the porch window, staring silently down at me, smoldering. The curve of her warm leg thrown across my stomach, as I tried to sleep and found it absolutely impossible.

I didn't dwell on the images long; there was no point. Briefly I thought about how many thousands of other memories just like that had been formed by other people in this same room, perhaps on the same floor. Now it was a no-man's-land bisected by a curtain, at least for the time being. I walked into Beth's room, where Ken was talking with her, and wished her a speedy recovery and a nice nap. She was very tender towards me, as though I had done something unexpected in wishing her well. Not for the first time I realized that there was something about her I didn't understand, some perspective that I really wasn't getting. I had to set it aside.

Ken and Phaedra and I returned to the quad and discovered Linda and her family unpacking furniture from a station wagon. Enjoying the chance to be chivalrous, I hauled a table and a box up to Linda's apartment. On the second return I discovered Scott, unloading things from the back of a minivan. Phaedra talked with her friend Gabrielle while I caught up with Scott and Ken together. This was my first experience with returning to a broad group of college friends after a summer vacation, and it felt peculiar. It underscored how weird it was that we had gotten so close, even though we'd spent almost all our lives in different parts of the country, or in some cases, outside it. I'd read somewhere that being in the military provided a similar experience: You get thrown into a unit with people way beyond your social network, and form a new one, with its own shared history and even stronger bonds. What had my college social group been through? Mostly a bunch of self-discovery and studying, with some romantic tribulations mixed in. We weren't saving or taking lives, just socializing each other. Definitely not like being in the military.

Scott began hauling his things up and Phaedra and I sat down on a nearby retaining wall to rest our feet. As we chatted, Scott passed by us four or five times, each time mentioning something in an aside. "Hey, did I tell you guys? I finally found a package of edible body paint. Had to get it from a catalog, special order. No bad taste this time!" ... "Oh hey, you know the Swinging Slugs dance group? I'm signing up new people at the fair. You should come by and we can do group demos!" ... "Hey, have you guys seen Kenny yet? I think I owe him some money. I lost a bet."

I got up and wandered around, picking through the other memories that the Merrill buildings conjured. I went into the main office in search of my ID card sticker, but I realized that I didn't even have my ID with me. While in there I saw the girl I'd seen before in the white hat, sitting on one of the couches and talking with some guy. I grabbed some candy from a nearby bowl to give myself an excuse to linger in the area, and deployed a college-age social tactic I'd learned few years ago: When a girl I'm interested in is talking with someone else, I ask that someone else a question and then "notice" the girl later on in the conversation, so she gets a chance to evaluate me without being put on the defensive. I asked the guy: "Oh hey, sorry to interrupt, but what campground did you stay in? Because it sounds like one I know..."

He answered and we chatted a bit. The girl added to the conversation. After a dozen sentences I flip-flopped and decided not to flirt with this girl after all. Her voice was slow and had an overly calm, almost drugged feel to it, which immediately made me knock her a few spots down the intelligence totem pole. Talking to her one-on-one would be a chore, no matter how fun she was to look at. No thanks.

I met up with Ken and Phaedra, and we decided to leave the campus altogether. We drove to Taqueria Vallarta and had burritos. Ken paid for me, as thanks for the spare room. It was the first time that Phaedra had eaten at Vallarta, and she liked it, though she wasn't prepared for the sheer volume of food. Once lunch had settled we decided to get some of our prep-work done for the photo shoot.

We drove downtown to the Goodwill store, and scoured the racks of clothes. I was looking for a brown sweater of the type and shade that matched the one I saw Phaedra wearing in my dream. Well, actually, she hadn't been wearing a sweater in my dream -- she'd been curled up on the forest floor topless. But I'd seen the sweater in a different dream, and since it was close to the color of the leaves, it would serve as a good backup choice if Phaedra got squeamish about putting her bare flesh on open ground when the time came.

Ken collected armfuls of potential garments and brought them to me for evaluation. I rejected each one with only a glance, which felt a little imperious, but Ken seemed used to this sort of thing. Early in this collaboration he'd declared himself the stage manager, and myself the director, and he seemed to know that a little bit of fussiness about "vision" was built into the relationship. Phaedra patiently modeled everything we presented her with, sliding each frock over her tank-top and doing a slow 360 in front of me. I kept apologizing to her, out of a sense that this objectifying routine could be upsetting, but after the second time she rolled her eyes and told me to shut up about it because she was enjoying herself.

We put one sweater on hold, then drove around town some more, trying three other used clothing stores with various levels of sexiness in their catalogue. As we went I realized that there was a whole universe of clothing that I knew almost nothing about. I'd gone to high school wearing jeans that my mother had picked out for me, the same brand of underwear I'd had since forever, and whatever shoes fit my humongous feet. The only choices I'd ever made about my wardrobe were about t-shirts. What business did I have directing a photo shoot with a pretty lady in it? As soon as the question appeared in my head I pushed it back out again. I didn't need to know about fashion: I was following my dream! Hah!

We didn't find anything better so we came back to the Goodwill and bought the sweater. $3.50, fronted by Ken. Satisfied that we had finished some business, we drove back up to UCSC.

As we were unloading at Merrill we ran into Linda again. "Hello, darlings! Have you seen Colleen anywhere?" she asked.

"Nope. Let's go find her!" said Ken, always one to add to a group.

We walked through the buildings to where we knew Colleen was living and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Our next big idea was to look in the dining hall. None of us had cards to get inside yet, so we walked around the big bay windows, staring in, until Linda spotted Colleen at a table. We waved ferociously at her, and as soon as she noticed us we started making ridiculous faces and going "Nyeah, nyeeeaah" and pressing ourselves against the window. She grinned but also looked terribly embarrassed, and continued talking with the people at her table.

Colleen had multiple friend groups that didn't intersect, and they were not all as wacky as this one, and none of us recognized the other people she was eating with. We were probably torturing her by being weirdos in front of this other group, but we gave absolutely no shits about that.

Since we couldn't get in to introduce ourselves politely, we gave up on our shenanigans and decided to seek out Lisa or Kenny. Both of them were in apartments in the Crown/Merrill complex to the north, but we didn't known which, so we tromped amongst the buildings in a big circle, knocking on the numbers we suspected, singing horrible drinking songs all the way. With everyone shuffled around into new rooms, no one knew the right phone number, and since few people had their computers unpacked, emails wouldn't work either. So we just made a nuisance of ourselves. We tried six or seven apartments, and Ken accidentally found someone else he knew, but no Lisa or Kenny.

Crestfallen, we returned to the quad. ... But after lingering there for just a few minutes, a large group of people barreled into us, screaming our various names. Kenny, Colleen, Alex, Brian, Scott, Kate, and several other people I could not name, who had been absorbed into the group and would probably become new friends in a few weeks.

The group split, and Phaedra, Linda, Ken and I followed Kenny to his new apartment. For some reason I thought that since he was active in the student government he would have access to a better living space, but it wasn't so. He was sharing two bedrooms with six other people, and as usual, several people had to put most of their possessions in the living room, including their computers. It was a cramped mess, but there was a couch, so we all piled onto it. Phaedra plopped down on my lap, which might have raised eyebrows in other social groups but was completely unremarkable in this one. We hung around, catching up and telling dumb stories about what we remembered from last quarter. Everyone was excited about the new Rocky Horror performance coming up. Ken and Linda and I read from a book of dirty limericks that someone had tossed on the table, making them sound as lewd as possible. Then Kenny had to go out, but he knew where Lisa's apartment was, so as he was leaving he walked us over to it.

Lisa's new apartment was a spacious two bedroom place with a living room that wrapped around a partial wall to a kitchen, with space for a dining table along the way. It was on the top floor, so the ceiling rose to a roomy peak above the column at the end of the wall. A part of me registered bitter surprise that this area had not been somehow roped off with netting and hammocks and ladders, so even more students could be crammed inside. There were six people living here, but they had so far managed to keep all the computers in the bedrooms except for Lisa's, which sat on a small desk by the door. She didn't care so much where it went because she often used screen sharing software to write her papers remotely from Neil's place.

Lisa spotted me and launched herself across the room, snatching me into a bear hug on contact and grinning hugely, which was her way. Neil was there on the couch, next to Kurt. Kurt reported that they'd just gone shopping at CostCo and bought a flat of coke by accident. No one in the household liked coke. Phaedra offered to buy it for five bucks. Done! We chatted for a while and eventually went back to Kenny's, and Phaedra sold half her cokes to Kenny while she was there. He crammed them into the fridge.

Since we had soft drinks chilling and were all a bit hungry, Kenny arranged a collection and ordered a pizza. Ken and I re-enacted a scene from a movie, which went off course into an improv insult duel, then turned into a wrestling match on the floor with Phaedra and Linda placing bets. Kenny set up his computer and plugged it into the campus network, and Phaedra took the opportunity to check her email. Then Kenny moved on to the boxes in his room, unpacking them with the door open so the conversation could continue. The pizza was late, but good. I had thick slices of combination on a napkin as we sat around the kitchen table and traded nasty puns and reviewed our class schedules. It wouldn't be long before everyone was buried in coursework and gatherings like this would be much harder.

Phaedra left to walk back to Mike's. The evening wound down and Ken and I said goodbye to Kenny, and walked Linda back to Merrill. From there we drove to Mike's and watched some TV for a bit while Phaedra caught up with him. Then we said goodbye to Mike, and the three of us shambled slowly into the van and drove down to the house in Watsonville, and collapsed immediately into bed. It had been a long, active day.

Comments

[zeugma92]

"I wanted to return Beth's microwave," he said, "but hers is at the bottom of a huge pile, so I'm giving her mine for now."

Only a college student could possibly utter those words in that order. 😄

[zeugma92]

"When a girl I'm interested in is talking with someone else, I ask that someone else a question and then "notice" the girl later on in the conversation, so she gets a chance to evaluate me without being put on the defensive."

I love too that it gave you a chance to evaluate her without your even having to say a word to her. Reminds me of the way I never responded to people with bad grammar and spelling on OKCupid.

This remains an excellent conversational tactic when talking to new people when you're alone in public even when you're not interested in dating -- perhaps especially when you're not. Let's face it, for most women a random man alone, piping up unasked, is likely to be either a nuisance or a threat, so you kind of have to prove that you're neither of those things before even looking in her direction. Of course that goes double when you actually are interested, which is what makes this so brilliant.

[garote]

That is absolutely true. Seems like 90% of a woman's time out in the world consists of nuisance and threat avoidance.

Of course, at the time, all I understood was that there were defenses up, and I wanted around them... :D

Seconded about the bad grammaring and spellllling. Such a weird thing, dating in one's 30's, and suddenly being the sought-after sex by women who are being bombarded with terrible messages about how they're "past marrying age" and all that shit... I really did not expect the tables to be turned like that.

[juan_gandhi]

Took me some time to finish reading it.
Enjoyed it a lot.