Molly

Thursday, February 19, 1995
David
Senior, Sociology
Columbus, Ohio


I and I alone walk from Russell House to Molly's apartment on Greene Street, none of the usual cars or kids or credit card salesmen’s calls or anything at all to dim the crunch of ice beneath my boots or the howl of wind in my ears. My chin is tucked against my chest. My hands are buried in my green nylon Gap parka’s pockets, its grey, cotton-lined hood tied tightly around my head. Molly’s dinner, in a snow-white plastic bag tied around my wrist, swings into my thigh with every quickening step.
The snow has slowed since this morning, but the wind is merciless: papercuts across my hands and face. It’s only a little after five o-clock, but the sky is already overtaken by an ominous gray, infinite and uncompromising, and I try my best to keep my eyes locked on my feet to avoid its engulfing, all-encompassing, never-ending gaze. 

A streetlight switches on as I pass underneath, and then another, and then another, and it causes me to relax, loosen, drop my shoulders, sigh. Relief.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch as I hike through the snow. The cold vapor of my breath erupting in front of my face with every step.

 In the distance, far above me, through the light of a window in a room high up in Snowden, a television flickers. A figure sits, and I can actually see the steam rising from his cup of something I imagine to be coffee, warm and heavenly, mirroring and brazenly mocking the visible bursts of breath escaping from my mouth—bursts that become closer and closer together as my pace becomes even quicker. Snowden was a shantytown dorm when I lived there my Freshman year. Now it’s just plain shitty. A sort-of Freshman exile for the kids too irresponsible to register early and land a sweet spot in Bathesda House, or even Gambrell Hall. It's heart-of-campus location is it's only saving grace. Other than that, it is dilapidated, decrepit, no air conditioning, an interior with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’ve heard reports of roaches in the beds. Athlete’s foot in the showers, showers that sometimes work but usually don’t. Last week Chris Kohler told me about a guy in his Parks and Rec lab group who swears he caught crabs from one of the seventh floor toilet seats, and I don’t doubt it. I smile at the idea of the Snowden Freshman Welcome Week care package grab bag including a roll of yellow “Police Line – Do Not Cross” tape along with the standard toothbrush, toothpaste, laundry detergent and phone list of all the pizza places around town. On any other day I'd avoid Snowden like death, but right now, I have to physically fight the urge to hang a left, sprint up the stairs and rip that steaming mug of heaven from it's owner's hands and snuggling into his, or her, sheets. I trek on instead, passing Snowden on my left. On my right, the dark windows of the snow-day-cancelled classrooms of Kentia Hall.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Molly's dinner swings into my thigh with every quickening step.

I tuck my chin tighter to my chest and press forward, having no idea how far down Greene Street I've walked. The cold wind bites and pinches into any, every exposed portion of skin it can find, and the wind whips needles into my face. I squint my eyes shut, grind my teeth, pick up the pace even more.

Seeking respite, I let my mind wander, and when it does it wanders, ironically, and rather cheekily, straight to snow.

There are some things I’ll never forget for as long as I live. The toy clown coming alive in Poltergeist, for one. I was five years old when I saw Poltergeist on HBO. My dad said I walked into his room with eyes the size of dinner plates and I said, “I don't think I should've seen that.” I don’t remember saying that, but I do remember sleeping with the light on for three months afterwards. The Saturday morning on which I finally beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!! for the first time--I will never forget that. I saw Poltergeist when I was five. I beat Mike Tyson in sixth grade--that would've made me 11. After that, a lot of shit happened in my life, I guess, and then Molly.  I don’t think there’s anything I will ever forget about Molly. 

The memory my mind goes to now is the day of our first snow. We were both Sophomores. It was February of 1993, and she had just moved into her apartment on Greene Street: the apartment I’m making my way to now. The snow was much lighter than any snow I’d seen in Ohio, ever, but the city itself reacted like Godzilla himself had just made Columbia his jogging route: closing all roads, businesses, and classrooms almost the second the first flake hit the ground.

I never liked snow, probably because I've always loved baseball, and to a kid who loves to play baseball as often as possible, snow is a unwelcome delay of game, a wasted weekend inside. And throughout my entire childhood, it never seemed to snow on the weekend unless we had spent the entire week planning a baseball game that would take place on said weekend. Unless we spent fifth period Social Studies deciding who was going to be Julio Franco and who would get to be Odibe McDowell. This snowed-out weekend bullshit happened so often that I began to take personal offense to it, like it was just snowing to piss off me and only me. So much so, that snow was the one thing I went to college in the south to get away from. To me, snow was a nuisance. Not to Molly, from Huntsville, Alabama. What was once the driveway-shovelling destroyer of my Saturdays was wide-eyed Molly’s first puppy, her Christmas morning, her first dance on Prom night. She shook me awake at just a little after seven that morning. Not nudged. I wouldn’t say russeled, either. She shook me awake, forceably and unforgivingly. I grunted as I awoke, as Molly focused into view. She was wearing my boxers and my Comstock High Lacrosse sweatshirt, but, as always, I noticed her smile first, before any of that.

“It’s snowing, baby!” she said. I’m not a writer by any means, but if I ever wrote a story about that day, I’d punctuate her sentence with an exclamation point, not for the volume of her declaration, which was barely a whisper, as delicate and soft as snow, but for the enthusiasm she packed into every word. It would represent not the volume of her words, but the wideness in her eyes.
“Wake up! It’s snowing!” she whispered, still shaking me until I obliged. 

Ten minutes later, just a little more than three years ago today, I sat on the balcony of the very apartment I was walking to right now. We sat hand-in-hand as we watched the snow fall, saying absolutely nothing at all for what seemed like hours on end, even when she pulled her gaze away from the hypnotic, "Chewie, hit the hyperdrive!" falling snow and into my eyes. She smiled that smile--that pretty girl from Huntsville Alabama seeing her first-snow smile--and scooted her chair closer, just a little. Then a little more. Then a little more, laughing. A little more, until our chairs were touching. She kissed me on the cheek, a quick peck, and smiled at me once again before resting her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her, kissed the top of her head while, below us, a group of bundled up students, probably freshmen, rolled snowballs and threw them at each other and made snow angels in the paper-towel thin layer of snow that had stuck so far. We went inside shortly after, not knowing or caring if our classes had been cancelled, and she put an extra comforter on the bed and we took our clothes off and afterwards she wrapped up in that extra comforter and got out of bed, twisting open the mini-blinds so she could watch the snow fall as she fell asleep in my arms. It was still snowing when we woke up six hours later. We spent the evening in bed, watching Seinfeld and Friends, and later she wrapped herself in the comforter, stood up again, disappeared for a long time, and while she was gone, I remember running my hand across the mattress where she had been, longing for her to come back. She came back with two cups of coffee, and I sipped mine from an adorable Snoopy mug, Woodstook sitting on his head, both holding steaming mugs of coffee, both smiling with eyes blissfully closed, the caption on the coffee cup read, “Happiness is a Warm Cup of Coffee.”

We fell asleep shortly after, and I remember her being warm. That’s another thing I’ll never forget: how warm Molly was. So warm and so calm on a day when the entire rest of the world wasn’t.

Her apartment building’s door handle is so cold it stings as I touch it. I quickly twist the knob and yank the door open in one awkward motion, pulling my had away and replacing it in my pocket just as fast. I slip through the door, stomp the snow off my shoes onto the rug in the building’s downstairs lobby, and my feet are so frozen that pins puncture them with each stop.

Cupping my hands, breathing into them for warmth, I stomp up the stairs towards Molly’s apartment, Molly’s dinner still swinging from my wrist. I stop at her front door, Number 9, signified with the “Welcome, Friends” doormat. I rummage through my jeans pocket for the key, hidden under the receipt for Molly’s chicken tenders and fries.

I open the door and I step inside.

“Molly?” I say, almost a little to myself. No answer, and I call her name a little bit louder. “Molly?”

Nothing.

I make my way through the living room, and wade straight into a mountain of clothes that had been clumsily discarded in the middle of room, embarrassed as I realize all of them are mine, and right then my stomach knots and I stop.

It’s suddenly very hard for me to move, and I find that I don’t really want to anymore. Molly doesn’t know I’m coming. I could about-face right out the front door. I have a Psych test tomorrow I should probably be studying for. At least 20 pages of “Rich in Love” to read. I could walk back to Bathesda, eat Molly’s dinner, watch the Channel 2 Movie of the Night, I think tonight it’s “Singles.” I love “Singles.”

I glance back at her apartment door. Turn around. My feet won't move.

“Hello?” she calls from somewhere behind me. “Is someone out there?”

My gaze stays fixed on the door, until I consciously pull it away. As I do I exhale forceably, audibly, and only then do I realize that I had been holding my breath. I try to speak, try to answer her, and am surprised that I can’t. Finally, laboriously:

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Davy!” she says. No. She sings. I can both hear and see the smile in her voice, which today, as always, is nothing short of angelic.

She has never, ever called me “Davy.”

“I’m in the bathtub! Come join!”

I step through the bathroom’s door-less doorway, hands still tucked deeply into pockets, teeth still chattering a bit, and starring back at me with the most inviting eyes and entrancing smile is Molly, naked, in the bath. Her head rests against the back of the tub as she beams up at me, a cigarette dangles from between her fingers on her right hand, which dangles over the edge of the tub. I glance from her eyes, to her breasts, to the lipstick smudged on the wine glass resting just outside of arms length on the corner of the tub, and I think she sees me see it because she laughs a mischevious laugh, and suddenly the “Davy” and that mischevious laugh makes sense.

She is so beautiful.

“Davy!” she repeats as if on cue, her voice a field of daisies. 

“Hello, Molly,” I say, and I can’t help but to laugh a bit as I say it. “How are you?”
“Hmmmmm?”

“I asked how are you?“

“Happy snow day!” she giggles.

She takes an over-exaggerated deep breath, squints her eyes shut, and slides downward until her head is fully submerged. She blows bubbles under, until she starts to laugh and she can’t take it.

Her head launches out of the water. She looks me in the eyes, and says “Happy snow day!” And she gazes up at me smiling, and I can’t help but to smile back.

Again I laugh, and she laughs back, and for a second I actually think about shedding my clothes and joining her in the tub.

“You start without me?” I ask, nodding at her wine glass.

“Jump in. Catch up.” she answers, smirks, almost dares, and I almost do. I almost do. I shrug my right shoulder instead. The plastic bag bobs up, swings out, hits me in the hip.

“Brought you lunch.”

“That had BETTER. Be chicken fingers." The words trip and fall, stumble out of her mouth.

"Yes." My best Brad Pitt as Floyd in True Romance impression.

She extends her arms. "Give me to them." And then she cackles like a madwoman and re-submerges herself.

She breaks the surface of the water and cackles.
.
“Hey, uh...can I get you some water or something, babe?”

“You can get me. Chicken fingers.” she giggles. Cackles. "Into my mouth." Tilts her head to the side. Puppy-dog adorable. 

I smile back. She is so beautiful.

"I'm fine, babe," she continues. "Just having fun! Get in here!"

 “I’ll be right back. I say, smiling, shrugging my shoulder again. "Leave this here?" The lunch bag bobs up, hits me in the thigh.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you some water”

“Davy. I want you…in this tub…in five minutes or less Davy Caldwell.” Every single word of that sentence was slurred. Her huge green eyes lock with mine and she pouts and she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life.

“Maybe," I say, walking out of the room. Turn my head. "If you’re lucky,” I add, as an afterthought, in her living room.

In the kitchen, i pick her favorite glass. The Tervis tumbler with the Gamecock logo. I fill it with water. Add some ice. Make one for myself.

Back in the bathroom. Molly is passed out.


I don’t know if I was supposed to see the note. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, at least not today. It was camoflaged, face down on the white ceramic tile floor, cigarette ash sprinkled on top of it, and as soon as I entered the bathroom, my eyes were drawn directly to it, even though I had completely missed it before. I rest the cups of water on top of the toilet, pinch the letter up between my thumb and pointer finger, shake it, cigarette ash snowflakes flutter off it as I do. I turn it over and almost don’t look even look at it, ready to fling aside her Sociology notes or weekly to-do list, and I almost do fling it aside instinctively, until I happen to notice the salutation at the top. In my hand is the beginnings of a letter, and the name in the salutation is mine. Not Davy this time, or even Dave, but

“My dearest David.”

She has never, ever called me “David.”

I start to read.

Fresh drops of water have caused most of the words to run, rendering most of Molly’s letter illegible, but I don’t have to squint or play detective to make out the first sentence, and I guess that’s the only sentence that really matters. They’re words we’ve skirted around, danced about, sidestepped for the last few months. The feeling behind those words had been there, lingering between us every time we were together, but the words themselves were never spoken, never put to ink until now.

My stomach tightens and cramps. My skin, freezing cold and wind-ravaged only seconds ago, instantly blushes and boils, and my undershirt instantly soaks with sweat.

I fold the letter. Drop my arms. The letter, as heavy and final as the words on it are, is surprisingly easy to look away from, and when I glance up from it, I find myself meeting my own gaze in Molly's bathroom mirror. I see eyes much sadder than Molly’s. Not sadder, really, but cloudier. I see a face full of just as many wishes but hardly any of her wonder. Hardly any of her hope. I look for solace.  Just a glimmer of Molly’s wide-eyed, girl from Huntsville, Alabama seeing her first snow smile, but I don’t see it. I don’t see anything, really. I don't see anything but Molly’s boyfriend.

I find that my gaze is much harder to pull my eyes away from than Molly’s letter was.

I'm in Molly's room, sitting on her bed. On the right side of the bed. My side of the bed. I had picked Molly up, carried her out of the bathtub. She had mumbled something when I did, but was asleep again before she even touched the bed. I’m watching her now, beside me, tucked snugly underneath two comforters, passed out and prone but still, somehow, utterly mesmorizing. Impossibly beautiful. Both comforters rise and fall with every delicate breath, and in each breath I see everything the world has ever meant to me.

She looks so warm. 

I reach down slowly and touch her face, softly, as if waking her would cause heaven to crumble and collapse. I brush my finger across her cheek.

She smiles.

She smiles as she sleeps, never once opening those eyes that so many times gave me hope and confidence and comfort from the cold.

My left finger continues to stroke Molly’s cheek. In my right hand is Molly’s note, the note I’m now absolutely sure I wasn’t supposed to find, at least not today. I’ve folded it neatly into fourths.

On her note is my reply.

I stand up slowly, and softly slide the note into her hand. I turn around, eyes fixed on my shoes, making absolutely sure not to see my reflection in her bathroom mirror as I pass. I make my way into her living room, around the mountain of discarded clothes, through her door, down the stairs, into the lobby, and back outside into the freezing cold.

We Ended Up at a Party at Scott's

Saturday, May 19, 1995
Mike
Freshman, Undeclared
Fort Mill, SC


We end up at a party at a house on Saluda, someone that Scott Sharkey’s brother, Kurt, knows. As soon as we walk through the door, Scott spots his brother instantly: short, stocky, slow, Southern, looks nothing like Scott. Scott runs over to talk to him, and Shane and Sean bolt off in the opposite direction, towards the keg, leaving me alone, drunk, eyes half open, red Dixie cup of vodka still in hand from the Alpha Chi mixer at Mad Hatter’s, and I stand in the doorway, looking, and the living room is packed with girls and boys and I’m living right through this and

The crowd has energy and there’s something about this that has energy and I smile and I try my best to take it all in, as I try to understand each and every person in this room—they all—they’re all from somewhere. The girl dancing by herself, by the fridge, three months ago, s

I just need to be alone.

I’m lying on top of the sheets on someone’s bed in someone’s room on the second floor of Curt Sharkey’s friend’s house, and I can see the red neon “Adluh Flour” factory sign in the sky just across Saluda, the “A” flickering on and off, and the all the lights are off. I am the only one in the room, on the bed, gold-framed Ray-Ban Aviators on, straight vodka in hand, when a brown-haired girl in jean shorts and a blue Chi Omega shirt sways in and sits down on the bed beside me, our heads resting against the headboard, directly under the same Resevoir Dogs poster Cruz has in his room and Garnett has in his. She was wearing a blue Chi Omega t-shirt and she was, I guess, gorgeous in a Midwestern sort of way. I didn’t know her and I didn’t want to and I didn’t look at her again, because I was drunk and her arrival had spoiled the intimacy of the moment, the sanctity and brooding I was going for and maybe hope she noticed but really I just wanted to be alone and I clinched my jaw and stared out the window at the flickering “A” and since the lights were off I wasn’t even sure she knew I was in the room on the bed next to her until she started to speak. She talked of date nights, of hand-holding, of nights spent curled up and shivering in the corner of the bed until he rolled over, possibly awake but probably asleep, and put his arm around her and her heart would slow and her skin would warm and she would fall back to sleep safely in his arms. She said this is what she needed. She talked of smiles that would make her shiver and touches that would make her arm erupt in goosebumps, and she asked me if I thought he loved her?

Did he ever really love me?

I turn to her, I sort of roll my head along the headboard and look at her, swallow, squint under my Ray-Bans, and her eyes are filled with tears, with hope, with need, with pleading, and I stare at her. I tilt my head  to one side, slant my eyebrows. She stares back at me and when she is sure I have nothing to say she erupts into tears and I don’t know why but I put my arms around her and cradle her,  as she buries her face into my shoulder, sobbs into my shoulder, and I run one hand softly up and down her back, and when I'm sure she is asleep I finish the rest of my drink—half a glass—in one unmercifull gulp, and after silently standing up and pulling the sheets over her shoulders, I pry her drink from her fingers and finished it as well

I crush the cup in my hand and let it fall to the floor.

As I walk out of the room, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and it freezes me, draws me in. I  clinch my jaw at myself, squint, as I think about what she said. I think about smiles that would make someone shiver and touches that would make someone smile, and  then I look down at her, sleeping, needy, shrivled and pathetic in the bed beneath me, and I clinch my jaw tighter and turn away from her, disgusted, wishing I had not finished her drink but poured the rest of it over her face, into her eyes, told her I saw her boyfriend fucking Wendy Rogers in the Wings on Wheels bathroom last Sunday after the Bathesda House Bash party I didn't even want to go to.

But I couldn’t look away from her. Silent, sleeping softly, chest slowly rising and falling. I rip my gaze away from her, leave, slam the door behind her, hoping I had frightened her, woken her, and as I decend the staircase I realize that I have no idea, no concept, no point of reference for of any of the bullshit she was talking about, and now my eyes well up with tears as I wonder where in my life I had gone wrong, but after only three steps down the stairs a girl by the stereo glances up at me and immediately does a double-take and smiles and I smile back and as I smiled I realized that I, on the contrary, I had done everything right. Absolutely right. 

You Don't Want to See The Sun Go Down

Wednesday, June 2
Shane
English
Lexington, Kentucky


With one hand on the roof of his beige, weather-stained, dented, decrepit Isuzu pickup truck, the other hand, holding the key, already in the lock, Mike stops. He stops and he turns to me, as I hoped he would. His red Jansport backpack is slung around his shoulder. He’s wearing a white Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt, huge Tommy Hilfiger red and blue flag on the front, and he’s at least thirty feet away and there is very little light left outside but I can still just barely see myself reflected in his Ray-Bans, wondering if he can see himself reflected in mine, and I’m overcome with the realization—the absolute truth—that whatever Mike is about to say is something I’m going to remember for the rest of my life. I decide that the next sentence that comes out of Mike’s mouth, whatever it is, will be something I will remember for the rest of my life. 

I look back at him and wait, sepulchrul grey clouds encroaching behind him. At his feet, a circle of leaves catches wind and starts to swirl; the impetus of a storm. Thunder in the distance. A lone drop of cold rain on the tip of my nose. One on my forearm. Another on my calf, and one more on my nose. He removes his hat and his long black hair dumps into his face, over his eyes, over his Ray-Bans, blowing in the wind, and I take it as a salute, a gesture of respect. Almost out of reflex I remove my Ray-Bans.

 Today I knew exactly what Mike was going to say to me, and he said it, word for word, just like I knew he would, and this time I knew exactly what to say back to him.

Mike smiles at my reply, but just barely. He swipes his hair back, places his hat back on his head, turns back to his car, opens the door, starts his truck, and drives away. The rain picks up, almost on cue, as I stand in the parking lot and watch him go, watch him until his car turns down Gervais, makes a right on Assembly and disappears. Not because I want to watch him, but because I have to. Because I can’t move. Because my feet just won’t work. I try to make them, but they won’t.

This is how I remember Mike five hours later, as thunder rattles my windows, as rain pelts against my windshield, as my windshield wipers are doing seemingly no good as I drive down the 405. In front of me, the city, my city, my home, shrouded in blackness, in darkness, nothing more than a friend telling you a story his friend told him about a friend, the remnants of a fantastic dream you reach for just after you’ve awoke but just can’t seem to grasp.

Who am I to have known you? To have lived those nights beside you? To have seen and solved all of my dissonance within you?  Have you lived through these nights? Have you quieted your contentions in me? I reach out to you now. My brothers. My only brothers.

You Can't Fight the Devil

Saturday, November 11
Andrew
Freshman, Criminal Justice
Lake City, South Carolina

I knew this was how the night was gonna end. I knew it even before she rolled her eyes and walked away, even before Mike Langone wiped the blood from his mouth as we followed the train tracks back to Bathesda. I knew it this evening, in Mike Cruz’s room, as soon as I seen that smile; as soon as I seen those eyes. Shit, even at breakfast Mike Cruz’s eyes were red. I mean, obviously they were brown, but this morning, in the Bathesda cafeteria breakfast line, I seen them spark an angry red. I seen them spark hate like I ain’t never seen before, just for a second, but I swear to God I seen it. The three of us were in line together: me and Mike Cruz and Shane, but I was the only one who seen it. I ain’t sure, but I think Allison Patrick, in her tight Chi Omega sweatshirt, was the flint, and Brian Rabb, holding hands with her in the cafeteria line, kind of in front of her but more beside her--he was the steel. Those two together? Shit, man. Might as well been fire.

I've noticed that there’s always been something about love that’s drove Mike Cruz crazy. There’s always been something about happiness that’s made him simmer.  That same look—I saw it for the first time, just for a second, on move-in day when I saw him watch The Fist—you know—his roommate, Andrew Phister? When I saw him watch Andrew Phister kiss his girlfriend goodbye. I was standing in the doorway because me and my dad had just met The Fist and his dad in the lobby and we was helping them carry boxes up, and I guess the box I had was the last box because after I put it down, The Fist looked around, shrugged, said something in her ear, something I didn’t hear, put both his hands on his girlfriend’s hips and kissed her on the cheek, and when he did she started to cry.  It—I don’t know—I thought it was—I don’t know, beautiful, and I smiled, sort of, and he hugged her tighter and she cried harder, and, I don’t know why, embarrassed, I guess, but I couldn’t look down anymore, not in their direction anyway, so at that exact moment I looked over at Cruz, and that boy, he was starin’ right at them. He sort of—his chin went to his chest and his eyeballs rolled to the top of the eyelids so he was kind of glarin, up and over, and I had seen that spark in those eyes for the first time. Boy, I’d seen it. Those eyes—I don’t know. They weren’t looking at The Fist or his girlfriend or even the both of them, but it was like they were looking at that hug, if that makes sense. Sizing it up. Challenging the emotion behind it. Daring it to come his way. Daring the emotion that caused that hug to even try to make it's way into his heart, but almost scared of it, like Dracula to God’s Holy Cross, defying it but maybe bluffing, walking towards it, shoulders back, fangs dripping, so that his enemies didn’t know it was his weakness. Those eyes—I watched them, they were all I could see but they couldn’t see me. They didn’t blink, not once, and I couldn’t look away from them.

Like maybe that kiss had just reminded Cruz of his last kiss back home, but now that I think about it, more likely, there wasn’t a last kiss. Maybe there wasn’t no one to say goodbye to.

Whatever it was, the spark caught this morning and kindled all day long: at breakfast, in Economics, as he bought Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction movie posters at the Russell House poster sale. By dinner them eyes were full-on smoldering, and by the time we got to Jim Bowen’s party the fire had spread to his smile.

We're Living in Their Spare Time

Friday, Oct. 6
Mike
Freshman, Journalism & Mass Communications
Camden, SC

I’m standing in my boxers and nothing else and listening to WUSC as loud as my radio will allow. On it, a Greenday-ish song I don’t know and don’t hate. I’m playing Tecmo Super Bowl II on my Super Nintendo and drinking my second of Parrish’s Icehouses and eating the last slice of a pizza I picked up from Pizza Hut three hours ago but hadn’t started eating until now. I finish the last slice just as Kerry Collins completes a fourth-quarter touchdown pass to Sam Mills and the song I don’t know but decide I like ends and a similar-sounding song by a band called Less than Jake begins. Still chewing the last slice of pizza, I press the kick-the-extra-point button with one hand and take a drink of my beer with the other. Wait for the game clock to run out, and the score is 28-7, Panthers. I pump my fist once, reverently, to no one but the TV screen. I save my game, flick the controller down on Parrish’s bed, and switch the Super Nintendo and the TV off. Exhale dramatically.

I look at myself in the mirror. Rake my hair down into my face with both hands, over my eyes, before sweeping it all back again. I exhale dramatically. I pace around the room. Sit on my bed and consider my options. I could call Garnett, see if he’s up for dinner at Russell House, see if he’s heard about anything going on at Mad Hatters or McKensie’s tonight. If not, maybe get a beer or two with him at Orlando’s and go back to his room and watch Dazed and Confused again, or maybe Less than Zero, and borrow a few more of his roommate’s CDs. I could go downstairs, play Killer Instinct with those two guys from Barnwell. Jack off to Parrish’s movie he recorded off late-night Cinemax I secretly discovered on a VHS tape cleverly labeled, “The Program.”  I could go to Blatt and work out, run my hand across my abs almost instinctively, decide I don’t really need to. I could call Roxanne and Brenna, realize I don’t have their number. I glance at the clock. 7:25. I could go downstairs, grab a chicken sandwich, hope someone I know is in the cafeteria.

I stand up from my bed. Slouch down in my desk chair, hair flopping back into my eyes, and I shut my eyes tightly, rub them with both hands. I open my eyes and exhale, and when I do, I’m staring at the picture on my desk, the one using the plastic IHOP promo card holder Parrish stole last week as a frame. The one and only picture on my desk. The first picture I unpacked when I moved in. The picture Parrish asked me who the girl in the middle was, and I didn’t have an answer for him. The only picture that, I guess, really matters to me. In a dark bedroom in a beach house at Myrtle Beach. Me and Tim and Danny and Lee and Alexandra, a cigarette dangling from Danny’s mouth, Tim, in a white t-shirt with a lot of clocks on it, from a restaurant in, I think, Virginia. Me, tan, shirtless, in my gold-rimmed Ray-Ban aviators and a drunken bad-idea backwards grey beret. Lee is leaning into the shot, her long blond hair lies across one side of my chest, and, looking at the picture, I can actually feel its softness right now. Alex's arm is around my shoulder.

I glance at the clock. 7:27. She’s probably in her room, probably not even getting ready to go out yet.

I could call Alex.

I turn down the radio. I pick up the phone.

No. Not tonight. I hang the phone up. I look back at the picture for a long time before spinning it around so that it’s facing the wall. 

I exhale again, rub my eyes again, mentally note how dramatic I'm being. I stand up, pace the room again. It’s not until I’m flipping though my CDs--looking for something to listen to but not really--that the truth hits me. The truth is not that there is just nothing to do tonight. Well: the truth is that it’s the weekend and there are, in fact, a ton of things I could do. There are an infinite amount of decisions I could make, but the truth is that making those decisions, and even moreso the corresponding actions those decisions would lead to, would require a lot more effort than I’m willing and possibly even able to put in right now, and when not even the beckoning, crispy, buttery goodness of a Bathesda chicken sandwhich can get you up and out of your room, there’s only one thing left for you to do.

I slide into bed and pull the covers up over my shoulders, and all of my anxiety disappears and wave of peace washes over me as I realize I’ve made the right choice. I’m actually not going to miss this Friday night at all, and as I drift off into sleep I decide that life is just one long process of getting tired.

I Want To Live Right Through You

Sunday, May 9, 1995
Garnett
Freshman, Advertising
Springfield, OH

His name is Matt Funke, and on the basketball court he is a god. A left-handed,
fleet-footed, calf-sock-wearing god with a blink-and-you’re-his-bitch crossover and a thirty-foot jump shot that can only be described as a flawless piece of perfect performance art. He comes in on Monday and Wednesday evenings, usually around eight o’clock, and sometimes on Saturday mornings, if there wasn’t a party at Snowden or a sorority-sponsored something at McKenzie’s or Mad Hatter’s the night before. I try to time my rounds so I pass the gym while he’s on the court, and if the front desk is sufficiently manned and Dennis Taylor has the day off, I’ll stay for a few minutes and watch him play. Because Matt Funke is a god, and to watch him play is Heaven.

Today is Sunday. It’s all-day intramurals day at the Blatt P.E. Center, which means no pick-up games are allowed. Matt does not play intramurals, and I’m pretty sure Matt knows this rule, which is why I’m surprised to see him on the court this morning, complete with signature blonde bed-head and signature calf socks. He’s wearing white shorts today, instead of his usual light blue Minnesota Timberwolves shorts, and a navy blue t-shirt, “Hopewell All Stars” across the front in yellow script, the number “18” in yellow on the back.

I’m standing on the sidelines on Court 2 when I first see him. I’m swallowed in the center of a circle of adorably clueless Alpha Chis with matching green t-shirts and blonde hair, in the middle of my second attempt in explaining to them the rules of the same game they’ve played every Sunday for the last month and a half, so he doesn’t really register at first. The girls tilt their heads to the left, slant their eyebrows downward, crinkle their foreheads, tilt their heads to the right. I swear to God I actually hear the bubble-wrap pinch of their brain cells popping as I explain the win-by-two rule for the second time in ten minutes. I slow down, enunciating every word. My head throbs, and I silently curse what might be the beginnings of a hangover from the what I thought was only moderate alcohol consumption from the party Mike and I went to in Lucy Floyd’s room at Gambrell last night. These Alpha Chis nurse my headache like a jackhammer, and I rub my temples and briefly glance upwards, towards the ceiling, towards the heavens, and mentally ask God why, why he has forsaken me so on this Sunday, this holiest of days, and just as I do, I catch the immaculate arc of a pristine jump-shot, looping from left to right. My eyes widen and my jaw hangs. The loft is immaculate. The spin is hypnotic. The shot is miraculous—rapturous—all the proof I or anyone would ever need of God’s existence, a basketball fan’s equivalent of a Christian seeing Jesus’ face in a tortilla chip, and I swear I can faintly hear angles sing as the shot whips through the net. A jump-shot that glorious could only have been born from the hands of one man. I lower my clipboard and stand on my tip-toes, peeking over that bleached blonde horizon, and there he is. Matt Funke, in the gym, on a Sunday. I hope—need—to see just one more shot. And I do. And it is bliss.

In my months of watching him play, I’ve noticed that when Matt Funke shoots a basketball, everything and everyone else on the court, in the world, seems to quiet and fade. Today is no different. The babbling of Alpha Chis, the empty, soulless stares of their I’ll-fuck-you-for-a-Zima eyes, the golden glow of panty I saw for a fleeting second on the blonde A-D-Pi on the hip flexor machine downstairs, the Psychology 201 test I should be studying for right now, whether or not I’ll be able to afford food for the last week of this month—suddenly these things not only become trifles, but things I can’t believe I actually lent importance to in the first place. They become a late-night infomercial with the volume turned down. They become the fat Delta Zeta at Jungle Jim’s who sassily told me I wasn’t her type, oblivious to the fact that I was only speaking to score an “in” with her hot independent roommate. When Matt Funke steps on the court—sandy blonde hair always spiked up and out at impossible angles by some Zeta’s fingers the night before, his diamond-sharp Details-cover cheekbones permanently flexed, everything else in my entire life instantly and unavoidably becomes insignificant. I told myself I wasn’t that bad looking in my room last Friday as I tucked my Hilfiger polo shirt into my khakis, and I thought my suspicions were confirmed by the cute Kappa Delta who smiled at me in the Russell House cafeteria and I smiled back—until I see those cheekbones. Until I stand next to Matt and realize I am a good five inches shorter. I was James Bond suave when I was lying in bed last Sunday night, planning out the paragraph I was finally going to blurt out to that blonde Alpha Chi in my Advertising 103 class I’d been checking out all semester—until I see Matt’s black hole stare: vacant and infinite and yet intriguing and indiscriminately inescapable. But most of all—worst of all—is that I consider myself pretty okay at basketball until I see his jump shot. His glorious jump shot. But I don’t really see it, as much as feel it, in my stomach, in my knees, in my ego. Because Matt Funke hits jump shots no man should ever hit. And Matt Funke never, ever misses. 

 “So how many halves do we play, again?” number 25 asks me.

“Four,” I answer, still on my tip toes, still staring at Matt, and I honestly believe this girl’s head is full of Rice Krispies. I watch Matt’s release. I follow the ball as it spins in slow motion through the air, and I can unbelieveably make out the word “Spaulding” on every rotation as it sails towards the net. 

WHOO-CRASH!

All around me the sound explodes off the walls and echoes from the rafters. The swish of a basketball net is probably my favorite sound in the world, except for maybe the sound of a beer can opening, but Matt Funke’s jump shots—they don’t swish. They crack, like a bullwhip sound effect in an Indiana Jones movie.

“Wait…five girls on the court? I swear there were ten last time.” 

WHOO-CRASH!

Jesus Christ. If this girl had another brain, it’d die of loneliness.

“How much time until…”

WHOO-CRASH!

So beautiful I must see more. Now.

I press my palms together in a forward-pointing prayer gesture and part the sea of green-shirted Alpha Chi’s, making a beeline towards center court, not really caring what happens to them from this point on, not really capable of considering the consequences. The bullwhip crack of Matt Funke’s jump shot is my guiding beacon—the possible tease of just maybe watching him play an entire game is my only hope of salvation.

Because of actual job obligations that go along with being an employee of the Blatt P.E. Center—manning the weight room, giving facility tours, maintaining the most forcibly determined eye contact while reminding old, naked Lit professors that they can’t shave in the sauna—I’ve never seen Matt Funke play an entire game of basketball. I’ve only been able to hide out in the gym long enough to see him play in three-minute bursts, but every one of them is a highlight reel. All I’ve ever seen him do is dominate: effortlessly and unapologetically. He knows you’re going to cross over before you do. He doesn’t jump for rebounds, but he’s somehow always there when they drop. He dissects defenses like a Biology major, and he does it better than anyone I’ve ever seen, in person or on TV.

I’ve developed a theory about Matt Funke as I’ve watched him play throughout the year. I have no empirical or scientific data to back this up, but from my own field studies and observations, I’m absolutely convinced that Matt Funke isn’t human. I think he’s something much more existential and ethereal. Not an apparition, or even an angel, but a force. Something unexplainable, like a human-shaped manifestation of a fleeting twist of fate or a coincidence to spooky to write off as chance. He beats you at basketball like him beating you was just something the Universe had planned for you that day. You could’ve accidentally slept in that day and gotten to the gym an hour later than you had planned. You could’ve caught every green light on the way to the gym and ended up on the court 15 minutes earlier than you planned, causing you to get in on one pick-up game earlier then the one you would’ve ended up in had you just been stopped by one of those red lights, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You were destined to lose at basketball that day, and whatever time you would’ve gotten there, 8:00 at night or 8:00 in the morning, Matt would’ve made sure it happened. He would’ve been there waiting for you, ready to shut you out 11-0, care of the Cosmos. That’s what Matt’s ass-kickings are. Cosmic.

Having said that, as remarkable as Matt’s inherent talent for basketball is, it’s not what he does on the court that fascinates me most about him. It’s not how he does it, or even how easily he does it. It’s why he does it that makes it impossible for me to pull my eyes away from him. I can’t really explain it, but there is definitely a something lingering in the air when Matt is in the gym—something heavy and imposing—and I’m sure anyone else in the gym at the time will confirm this as fact, were you only to ask. It’s something I’d most liken to the presence of a fight at a hockey game, and the almost morbid disappointment you feel at the end of a game in which one didn’t break out. It’s that feeling that makes you reflexively stand up in your seat every time Mike Tyson lands a thunderous left hook to the body of his opponent. In all my years of watching him play, I’ve never once seen Matt smile. I’ve never seen him laugh, and I’ve never seen him acknowledge a teammate’s praise or slap a teammate on the ass after a bucket. I’ve never seen him—this is kind of hard to explain—but I’ve never seen him there. I’m even more sure that what Matt does on this court is not something I’d ever describe as playing a game. At least, not for him. Matt’s not playing basketball. He’s extracting vengeance. For him, basketball is a torture device, and it’s his socially acceptable way of torturing people as brutally, efficiently and publicly as possible, without any worry of recose or retaliation. With every glorious jump shot he hits he’s boiling blood, eviscerating egos, slicing up self-esteem, and there are two things I’m absolutely sure of: he likes doing it, and he has to do it. It’s the mysterious yet apparent depth of his hate that draws me to the gym whenever he’s there and my unsuitable need to understand it that forbids me from leaving. Watching him is intriguing like concentration camp photos, hypnotic like a knife-fight. It’s his play that puts you under, but it’s the containment of that hate and the possibility of it one day escaping that keeps you under, keeps you watching, until the game-point snap of the net whoo-crashing jolts you awake like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers.