The Ghost Apple (10 page)

So: You're right. I am not doing so great. I admit it. Big Ben is practically the only person I've been hanging out with. I don't know why. Nothing really happened with Becca and Francoise or anyone else, but it's just that I suddenly feel like I can't talk to anyone. I've actually been talking sometimes to the dean! I told you I hung out with him at a party? He's a very sweet old guy. I think maybe he loves me but at the same time I'm totally positive that he cares about me as a person. Maybe it's just nice to talk to someone a lot older. He's a grandfather figure. Also, he understands loneliness. He's very lonely too.

You don't have to come up here. It's okay. I'll see you pretty soon anyway. I've just got to work through some stuff on my own. My eating thing is under control, don't worry about that.

Maybe I was expecting an
answer
from Kabaka? When I got home last night I spent twenty minutes looking at lynching photographs online. I know what you're going to say and it isn't what you think, it isn't like I was crying and cutting myself and flipping through these things. It just seemed like if I only concentrated really hard I could figure out what makes people do these terrible things. But either there's nothing to figure out or the explanation is so awful that it's better not to think about it. Those white southerners bringing their kids to watch a lynching. The whole thing escapes me. I can't get to the end of it. Going to the lynching and then coming home refreshed and eating dinner and sleeping soundly. Professor Kabaka says the devil is real. The devil lives in the human heart.

Chris! What's happening to me! All I talk about is myself but I think about you all the time. I'm really glad everything is okay with Max. I started to worry something had happened. Obviously it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I like Max.

I had a dream last night that I peed in my dresser drawer. In the dream it seemed like a perfectly acceptable place. I was telling one of the Chloes, “This is one of the places you're allowed to pee.” When I woke up I had to check.

 

Love,

M

From

The Tripoli College Telegraph

November
6
,
2009

THE SPORTING LIFE

Tyrants’ Woes Continue

This season, the Tripoli Tyrants are contending with more than just the legacy of American slavery.

Tyrants kicker Ernst Blovitch was arrested Saturday night following a dismal performance in the Tyrants’
31–24
loss at Barnum College.

Blovitch, who missed two extra points and a
25
-yard field goal in the game, allegedly parked his car at the intersection of Main St. and Sycamore Ave., where police officers discovered him lying on the hood.

“It was a cold fall night,” Blovitch said later, “and the hood of the car was warm. I was gazing up at the night sky. I was haunted and bewitched by the sweet moonlight.”

Alcohol does not seem to have been a factor, and Blovitch was released later that night.

The incident is just the latest in a series of bizarre events involving Tyrants kickers, who have missed
13
consecutive field goals and all but one extra point this season.

Giles Saint-Paul, who missed two field goals and two extra points in Saturday’s game, explained the problem this way:

“When you watch from the stands, you can’t hear what the football is saying.”

The news isn’t all bad for Tripoli. Depatrickson White and Teshawnus Marchampton didn’t seem at all distracted by the Pinkman slavery scandal. The two freshmen combined for
220
yards and four touchdowns last week, and quarterback Tom Hoffman went
16
for
22
in another efficient performance. If the Tyrants could make their field goals, their offense would easily be the most dangerous in the conference.

Undercover Dean: Blog Post #3

The other day I ran into Megan in the dining hall. I waved and asked if I could sit with her. She shoved her backpack aside.

“Did you know that Pacific Islanders made it all the way to the coast of South America?” she said. “Way before Columbus crossed the Atlantic.”

I told her that people said they were the greatest navigators in history.

“They brought sweet potatoes back with them. In some parts of the Pacific, sweet potatoes are still known by their Quechua name.”

She sighed and looked down at her empty plate.

“I just ate a muffin and pudding sandwich,” she said. “Pretty gross. Do I look fatter to you?”

To me she was almost inconceivably beautiful, although I couldn’t think of a way to say it without embarrassing her. I told her she looked very healthy and fit.

She shook her head. “Did you know that Professor Kabaka left?”

“He what?” I said. “He left? Who left?”

“Kabaka left. He said he was going back to St. Renard. To fight against neoliberalism, he said.”

I told her I was sorry to hear it, and I
was
sorry, but from the tone of her voice and the way she looked down at her plate, I could also tell that she must have had feelings for him. I’d been starving just a moment before, but now I didn’t even want to look at my
Drippy Wrap w/Fish
.

Poetic Excursions

I went back to Hogbender Hall and took a nap. I didn’t know what else to do. Luckily, college is full of distractions. Sometimes it seems to consist of little else. While I was sleeping, Lehman pinned a poem to my shirt. He’d written it just for me.

On the Occasion of His Birthday

My suitemate has a bad hip

From crossing the Bering Sea land bridge.

He has a scar on his cheek

From the first Punic War.

He says dodo tasted great

But mastodon was better.

My suitemate smells like a urinal cake,

Like an old papaya, like a musk ox

Running from a wolf running from death

Through the long tunnel of the years.

My suitemate is one year older today—

A college freshman

On his last legs.

It wasn’t even my birthday!

Burke had also been trying his hand at a little verse. He was reluctant to share his work, but Lehman was able to make him understand that we were all friends here, and we’d give him the most balanced and well-intentioned critique we could.

Darkness at Nightfall

I peeled myself off my bored bed,

Aching to confront another day.

It’s
2
AM in my soul

And it’s midnight in my heart

And it’s too late,

It’s been too long,

(How can I go on?),

Since I saw her in lecture yesterday.

Cold days, long nights,

And the hardest thing is knowing

That Akash banged her.

Every night in this nightmare of love,

I put a dagger in my

Imaginary

Heart.

I was thinking of Megan. The truth is that I felt jealous of Professor Kabaka, so I could certainly relate to the thematic content of Burke’s poem, but I think I was prejudiced against it for that reason. Its poor execution made me worry that my own feelings were cheap. As a result, I’m afraid I was a little too hard on this unhappy young man. I tried to explain that his work was perhaps too honest, but all I ended up saying was that I preferred Lehman’s poem. The comparison was unfair and unwarranted, and immediately I felt bad about it.

Burke looked at me with misty eyes and said, “How can a poem be superior if it isn’t sincere?” His features, already very small, looked smaller still. His eyes were like two currants in a big ball of rising dough.

I told him that I wasn’t discounting the importance of sincerity. Or at least I didn’t mean to.

Lehman said, “Should the work of art always be conceived and executed in a spirit of deadly earnest?”

“I just think you should try to say true things,” Burke said.

“In my poem, I address themes of history, mortality, and the migration of peoples. I resent the suggestion that there’s anything insincere about it.”

The Dean in Deep Cover: Scenes from Undergraduate Life

Who can believe that we’re already more than halfway through our first semester? College life seems to move quickly and slowly at the same time, and the last few weeks come back to me in flashes:

Here I am in the common room with Akash. It’s a somber moment. He’s describing a feeling of despair and emptiness in the face of mortality. I’m saying to him, “Everybody gets old, Akash. It’s a part of life. Everybody dies.” He nods sadly, but then Lehman shouts from the other room, “Whoa! Spoiler alert!”

Here I am with Megan at a protest rally, carrying a sign that says
A Vote for Big Anna Is a Vote for Slavery
. We’re marching in solidarity with the workers on Big Anna®’s Renardenne plantations. We’re also calling for more detailed nutritional information on Big Anna® product labels, because they tell you there are only
120
calories in a Banana Bran Muffin®, but when you eat one, all the sugar makes your eyes ache. So I’m also holding a sign that says
What’s in My Muffin?

Here I am staring into the mirror.

Here I am standing on my chair, risky business for a man my age, reciting Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”

Here we are at “Pub Night” in the dining hall. I’ve eaten
Fried Cheese Bollocks
,
Fish and Chips
,
British Buffalo Wings
, and a
Scotch Egg
, which is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in Italian sausage and deep-fried. I feel like I’ve swallowed a meteorite.

Here I am at a party, where a student wearing a bathing suit and a shiny toreador’s blouse is telling me how surprised everyone was when he threw his turtle into the pool earlier that day. He holds a beer in one hand and a Gatorade in the other. He says, “So he starts swimming, my turtle, and everyone’s like, ‘Holy shit!’ And I just say to them, ‘He’s a turtle, man. Of course he can swim.’ ”

Here I am washing my socks and underwear in the bathroom sink while Lehman shows me that you can get a little drunk from swallowing mouthwash. The dean in me is alarmed, but in the mirror I see that my face is stony and expressionless.

Here we are at Casino Night!

Here we are at the Battle of the Bands. Our favorites are the Singing Waxworks, Free Pat Down, and Benign Neglect.

Here’s another bright crisp fall day, and I can hardly see for the storm of yellow leaves. I’m wearing a coat and scarf and I’m walking up the hill to the science library, even though I’ve stopped attending classes and I don’t really have anything to do up there. I’m listening to the Velvet Underground on my new iPod.

And I’m remembering the fall days of my youth. That first breath of cold, the leaves gathering against walls and fences, a foretaste of nostalgia that comes paired with a wild excitement. I remember it—the strength and pain of youth—and now, miraculously, I feel it again.

The Man in Me Might Be Almost Anyone

To blow off some steam, we thought we’d have a party. In an e-mail invitation, Lehman called it the “First Annual Autumn Antislavery Bash.”

By now I’d gotten used to these events, but I still marveled at the way excited college kids spoke to one another.

“I tried to start my thesis last night,” one student announced, “but it just came out gibberish.”

I heard another student saying to his friend, “You know Pete? I figured out Pete isn’t a Hasid. The side-locks are an affectation.”

At the beginning of the night, while Lehman was polishing off his third or fourth beer, I reminded him not to drink too much. He’d made me promise to remind him, because just that morning he’d been so hungover that he brushed his teeth with exfoliating facial cleanser. But now, only eight hours later, he shrugged the episode off.

“It’s a way of life,” he said, “like being a galley slave or an Alpine skier. There are highs and lows. Sometimes the routine is difficult to bear.”

Soon Lehman was sick again, and Burke dragged me into the bathroom to check on him. He was pale and wall-eyed, hugging the bowl of the toilet and gesturing madly with his fingers. There were four or five people watching him. Tripoli bathrooms are spacious, even if the fixtures are older than I am. Ours has three sinks, two showers, two toilets, and lots of room for spectators.

“Problem in a secular world,” Lehman was explaining, “is no point of reference. How far to go? Which books to consult? Where to find the correct solutions?”

All good questions, I thought, but I was a little frustrated that Lehman had put himself in this position for the second night in a row. I was turning to leave when he caught sight of me and called me over.