Memoir of a Pseudo-Amnesiac: 3

I would be lying if I told you I remembered skipping home with brown paper bags clutched in my hands. That is not the way that real memory works, or at least not mine. (Also, I do not skip.) The walk home was probably spent thinking half-thoughts and imagining a romantic encounter, so there was nothing to store away for future reference. Still, the exchange made an impression on me. Daydreams aside, I could count on one hand the number of transparent post-puberty interactions I’d had with women. Naturally, I wanted another with her since even then I knew she was the reason for the genuine moment. Note: wanting is a far cry from willing. I was unwilling to do anything about this desire beyond hope it would merely happen as our other meetings had. An angling metaphor I was taught by a local with ample tufts of grey hair around his ear canals is apropos. Some people fish with a live bait and others fish with artificial bait. With live bait, you cast your line out and let the worm wriggle an appetizing cha-cha for you. You watch and wait and if a bluegill comes by to nibble, the bobber goes under. Give it a yank and reel it in. With artificial bait, you cast your line out and have to reel it in again and again because otherwise the bait sits there, neither looking nor smelling (fish have a sense of smell) like anything worth swallowing. No matter which you use, fishermen are at the mercy of the fish. The shiniest, smelliest, most jitter-bugging lure won’t catch a thing that isn’t hungry. But the fishermen who use artificial bait won’t face facts. They think they should have used a different color or one with a longer tale. The point: no matter what you do, whether you go home happy or hungry is up to fate. Historically, I fished with live bait. There’s less remorse.

I kept my eyes open for her, but not exclusively. I kept my eyes open for a fair number of people. (She was in the minority of people whose name I actually knew.) I was a voyeur—minus the sexual connotations—for many years. The way people act is ceaselessly fascinating to me. This and my steadfast passion for spiting my parents were reason enough to declare a major in psychology. What others say (verbally and nonverbally) is, on the whole, more entertaining than your average Hollywood flick. College is a boon to those of us who like to people watch since the atmosphere catalyzes exhibitionism. Outside of the legislative houses of the world, there is no greater ratio of posturing per capita than within the confines of universities. Plus, few sports require less upfront investment. The only equipment a voyeur needs is dark tinted/mirrored sunglasses or a book/magazine/newspaper. Keeping your head askance while walking past someone or turning pages while seated is sufficient to disarm most unconscious human defenses. You can look or listen to your heart’s content.

She was nowhere to be found. The man returned to his post at the shanty, the grocery store only contained people reliant upon shopping carts to stay upright, and she apparently did not have a taste for subway sandwiches. Our rendezvous options were exhausted. I moved on. It turned out our paths did not cross because she did not leave home often. She was wary about the whole college scene. She declined many an invitation to underground bashes from boys who never heeded the first ‘no’. If you had spent as much time eavesdropping on the locals as I did, you’d know the university ripped a fissure in the community. Some of the folks (their term, not mine) found the clogged parking, rampant littering, and nightly fracases too much to handle. Jethro Slocumb, an antebellum politician, sold the hamlet’s soul to a pack of scholars and lawyer-types way-back-when and its founding fathers would spin rotisserie-like in their graves if they could see it now, so the story goes. Others, usually the entrepreneurs and their families, didn’t mind the commotion. Small markets are fertile ground for monopolies and at least it was something to talk about besides the fickle climate. She was in the former camp, but not rabidly so. To her, it was one of life’s inevitable trifles.

In the meantime, I kept busy. Being steeped in the American ethos of productivity, I could not indulge in much thumb-twiddling. (Thanks to my grandma, the Puritanical mantra “Idle hands make Devil’s worship,” is lodged brain-stem deep. I still cannot watch more than a half an hour of television without nauseating guilt.) I’m not what used to be called ‘antsy’ and now is diagnosed ‘hyperactive.’ It’s not as though I cannot see things through to the end. Rather, I can and nearly must concentrate. I am profoundly uncomfortable with stillness or quiet and, if I am not acting (which involves concentration), I need to be thinking. Sharks have to move and I have to be attentive. Staticky news radio was always on, at least whispering in the background, for the times I wasn’t reading or observing. Whenever I lied motionless or am otherwise kept from stimuli, my brain cannibalized itself. I wouldn’t have even noticed this preoccupation of mine had she not brought it to my attention (which, ironically, was yet another concept about which to think). We hashed out possible explanations, doing our best impressions of psychologists. I proposed my inability to veg/chill-out is because of a latent fear of mortality. She thought I had an incipient case of autophobia. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Good—albeit selective—dweeb that I was, I completed all of the required reading and assignments for classes I thought worthy of the effort. School work was my alternative to consorting. Although I observe people with a passion, I preferred to be uninvolved with them. I had a misanthropic streak which manifested in the quiet judging and condemning of peers whenever I was in a bad mood. (In good moods, I smiled in agreement without showing my teeth.) I saved people a fair share of trouble by keeping to myself.

In those exceptional moments where I was not concentrating, I was likely inebriated. During the ‘play hard’ portion of my time, I drank to excess (usually propped up against a tree trunk in the hinterland). A backpack containing a note pad, flash light, and bottle of bottom shelf ethanol was my combination luggage-and-ticket. Once my BAC plateaued above a certain level, I could unwind. Fields of waving tall grass will put you at ease. I started a few poems, but found myself bereft of brevity.

Alcohol was the medicine I took to alleviate the swelling and fever of my hypertrophic head. Someone much smarter than me observed the systemic mistreatment of collegiate livers was due to anxiety about becoming an adult, the pot of coal at the end of the rainbow as it were. (I suppose if taking the training wheels off a bike could be drawn out for four years, kids might take to the bottle, too.) We were, then, pupa reluctant about emerging from chrysalises. We felt, semi-consciously, the nearness of it. Adulthood loomed over us and I, at least, could taste pennies on my tongue when I thought about the sun setting over the wonderland of academia. (It was a scenic spot so starkly different from my humdrum hometown I felt like a foreign exchange student. Campus topography was distinct for its gargantuan oaks and elms. Like the professors, they made you feel young and tiny. Tree hugging was physically impossible as the trunks’ circumferences overwhelmed even basketball players’ wingspans. In these groves, sunlight only appeared in irregular splotches when strong winds would part the sea of leaves. Architecturally, brick and sandstone was the order of the day. The buildings were Romanesque circa the first quarter of the twentieth century. Archways topped most windows and rooflines were embellished with thick ornate cornices. The president’s house was palatial and guarded by limestone gargoyles whose teeth must have been sharpened annually. Spear-tipped wrought iron fences kept the riff-raff at bay.)

Procurement was never an issue. The deputy was more concerned with livestock rustling than underage drinking and the gas station attendants never consulted IDs since it was bad for business. Illicit substances and other intoxicants were obviously off limits on/in school property, so consumption was a tad stickier. Thankfully, the problem solving skills and critical thinking strategies we were taught had real-world applications. Prohibition could be circumvented largely with repurposed soda bottles and timely swishing of Listerine before interrogations with staff members. Should a student be caught red-handed, campus security guards (who were also campus construction workers, campus groundskeepers, and campus hosts, servers, and dish washers should a catering event arise) could easily be bought off with a share of the contraband. (Niccolo Machiavelli warned royalty against employing mercenaries. Human motivation is such that, devoid of personal investment in the outcome, players will quit when the going gets tough. Thanks to the changelessness of human nature, the advice is still credible.) It did not hurt, either, that the guards were grossly underpaid and knew their way around a 12-pack. The only guard to beware of was Reginald Young, who aspired to be the school’s equivalent of a sheriff and sporadically wore a cowboy hat to prove it. He was a one-man buzz-kill. There must have been a poster with Smiley Face stickers by Young’s name in the break room for all the tattling he did.

Spinach aids the detoxification process and I bought more than my fair share of it. (The only items in the cafeteria that would settle an upset stomach were the packets of instant oatmeal. The exorbitant tuition fees had no impact on the quality of the ingredients. Recipes involved grease, salt, something inorganic, and, if desert, high fructose corn syrup.) Eventually, I inquired of the grizzled yeoman about her. Our first conversation went something like this:

“Where’s that young woman who was here week before last?”

“She’s my daughter and she’s not interested.”