That's Me In The Corner

       I began to staying away from the room when I knew Artemis would be there.  I was having enough trouble adjusting to my new life and surroundings, trying to figure out where I fit in around campus.  Clearly my own room was not the place.  Conversely in the middle of the day when I knew he had class and then had to go directly to basketball practice, I stuck very close to the room.  In those few hours a day it was my sanctum.  I had arranged my class schedule so that I had one class in the morning (I dropped that 8:15 shit) and one later in the afternoon.  So after lunch I’d be in the room listening to music, drawing, or just staring at the wall.  Or else I’d go to the mall.  The one thing that kept me from losing my cool or snapping at Artemis was I had free reign to take his car pretty much whenever I felt like it. 

But tension around the living situation was only compounding on my lack of feeling accepted by any one else around the school.  I wasn’t connecting with people.  I had two pre-existing friendships from high school there.  One was being destroyed by close-quarters.  The other, Stacy was practically MIA.  He was a big man on campus type.  Everyone knew him, and being ever the politician he wanted to make sure everyone liked and admired him.  I saw very little of him.  And honestly that seemed okay at first, because I did feel like being in this new environment I shouldn’t cling to old friends.  I wanted to meet people.  I wanted to connect and really feel like I was part of the community.  I just wasn’t. 

Within the first couple weeks I was going to class, eating lunch alone, wasting the afternoon, and at dinner I would occasionally meet up with Stacy and sit at his table.  But I usually just sat and observed him as held court.  Whatever his shortcomings, the guy could work a table.  If there were ten people at a table, all eyes were on him.  Every ear was listening to whatever he was saying.  He would introduce me to people, and I’d try to interject and engage, but I always felt like I was just performing. 

I just looked around and saw my classmates bonding, forming new cliques.  I felt like the last kid to be picked in gym class.   In retrospect, I think this feeling of alienation is probably more common among college freshman than I realized.  It was really coming to a boil.  I didn’t get it.  Was I literally scaring people away?  That sounds silly, but on multiple occasions as a teen, I was told I had a “scary face” or “looked menacing.”  Again, the dark hair, dark eyes, and by this time a black goatee.  Maybe it was true.  Throw a pair of horns on my head and a pitchfork in my hand and I wasn’t too far off from those cartoon representations of the devil they were all so afraid of. 

I think the truth was just a combination of being away from home, feeling dropped into a strange place surrounded by strangers, and taking on a study load that was overwhelming in subjects that weren’t like anything we’d studied in high school.   The hardest part of all might be having nobody to talk to about it, no one who would commiserate or listen to your whining.  Most of all, no one that made you feel comfortable and safe and could distract you from the fear. 

If I had been in my right mind I could have told myself, look, you’ve never been quick to open up to people.  You’ve always hung back a bit, waiting for kindred spirits to come along.  This isn’t new.  And the people who seem so chummy so quickly are probably just desperately grasping onto the first life preserver they could grab.  

And then came the call that pushed me off a cliff, emotionally. 

Back in Milwaukee, we had a dog.  A little shi tzu that was given to my stepmother some ten years earlier.  I’ve always been an animal lover.  Normally as a guy I prefer bigger dogs, but this one was the sweetest, most affectionate animal I’d ever known.  She was the closest thing I had to sibling up there.  Just a few weeks into my first semester I got a call from my dad that she was sick, and worse than that, she was going to have to be put down.  It shook me, but for the moment I sucked it up and didn’t deal with it.  I don’t remember for what, but I had to get to the fine arts building.  I know I didn’t stay long because I came outside at a weird time that fall afternoon when no one was out walking around.  That’s when this shaggy beige dog came running up to me.  It was some kind of mutt though looked sort of like a cock-a-poo crossed with a wheaten terrier.  It ran towards me but when I knelt down and slowly put a down turned hand out, it backed off, then circled around me.  That’s when I noticed it was trembling and was way too thin for its size.  This dog seemed scared and hungry.  After some gentle coaxing, I got her to come to me.  Once I pet her carefully a few times she began to trust me.  She didn’t have tags or even a collar.  After spending some time just petting her, getting her to calm down, I led her towards the commons.  I wanted to find her something to eat.  Of course I also didn’t want to risk her running off again, so I ducked inside and bought the first couple things I found in the vending area.  I think it was Ritz crackers and vanilla wafer cookies and bottle of water. 

I know none of that is the healthiest choice for an animal (hell they’re not really good for us humans either) but this dog was starving and the vending machines didn’t sell Purina.  But the pooch ate up everything I gave her and lapped up the water.  She was pushing herself against me as I sat on a ledge beside her.  She seemed not only starved for food but just for some love and affection.  I guess it’s fair to say I knew the feeling.

A group of people came up out of the commons who’d been downstairs eating a late lunch.  The dog actually turned and ran over to check them out.  Among the group was another Theatre major, one of the more notorious characters around campus, MaRek.  Yes, that is how he claimed his name was spelled.  I would go on to really like MaRek, despite the fact that you could only believe about 60% of what came out of his mouth.  For instance, I eventually visited his family home in Wisconsin and I’m fairly certain I saw a number of items where his name was simply spelled Mark.  But, if you knew MaRek, you quickly learned to indulge him and his wild stories. 

He wanted to be a celebrity so badly, and at that school, he was.  He made sure of it by spreading around quite a legend about himself whenever he could.  Of course, if you asked him he’d be the first to tell you how shy and antisocial he was.  MaRek dressed like a cross between Robert Smith of The Cure and a 70 year-old bubby.  Long sweaters and cardigans, lots of black, a skull cap, a pierced eyebrow, and thick heeled Doc Martins.  He spoke slowly with a deep, lispy voice, his tone always nonplussed.  He put a great deal of effort into sounding unimpressed with the world around him.  And while at that time he vehemently denied it, he was the gayer than Jim J. Bullock blowing the Village People while sipping Cosmos in a pink neon hot tub.  When MaRek told us how much he loved pussy, it was like Liberace winking to Mike Douglas he hadn’t married because he just hadn’t met the right girl yet! 

I barley knew MaRek at this point.  As well as you could know him anyway.  When he saw me sitting there and saw the dog coming for him he put on a big performance.  He grabbed the arm of the guy next to him (MaRek was always looking for reasons to be touchy feely with whatever guy was around) and pretended to be terrified by this animal.  He was literally squealing and feigning a panic attack.  But in a manly way, of course.  Mind you this dog which barely came up to my kneecaps was the sweetest, most harmless creature on Earth.  Marek then looked over at me and hissed, “Ugh, get that thing away from me or I swear to God I will kick it!” 

I lashed out at him with something clever like “shut the fuck up” and he gave an offended jerk of the head and sashayed away to RuPaul’s “Supermodel.”  Work!  Okay, that part wasn’t true.  Although in his head I bet it was.  But it really pissed me off.  This dog just touched me.  I love dogs anyway and to see one so nervous and hungry made me care for it more.  It also made me furious with the owners, whoever they might be.  I would find out sooner than expected.  Right after the encounter with MaRek, a chunky teen rocketed up the sidewalk on rollerblades with a leash in hand.  He called out a name I don’t remember and the dog looked up.  She didn’t go running though.  He saw her with me and came skating over, calling the name again and ordering her to come. 

“Is she your dog?” I asked. 

He didn’t even respond at first.  I put my hand on the dog to keep her with me, but she wasn’t making any effort.  Finally the kid said that she was in fact his family’s dog.  Oh, and incidentally his father was Professor Shay, the head of the Psychology department.  A department of two, by the way. 

“You ever feed this dog?” I asked.  He stopped on his wheels but still didn’t’ say anything.  “This dog looks like she’s been abused.” 

“She’s not abused,” he said.  “She’s just old.  She ran off.” 

He called her again and this time she got up and trotted over obediently.  He slipped a collar over her head and clipped on the leash.  He skated off without saying anything else, pulling the leash behind him making her run along to keep up.  Every instinct in me said chase after and brain him with the biggest rock I could find.  I didn’t give two shits who his father was.  I was angry.  I was angry that he seemed so uncaring towards such a sweet animal.  I was angry for the dog.  I was angry that my own pet was being put down back home and I couldn’t see her again before it happened.  I was angry that I was at this school with a couple thousand other people and felt completely alone.  Whatever it was, that little old dog made it all come flooding out. 

I started walking.  In fact, I started running actually (something I rarely do, which if you see me you’d believe) but without any real destination.  But between the commons and my dorm was the campus chapel.  I had a thousand emotions swirling through my head and I couldn’t see straight.  In my Christian upbringing I’d always been raised to believe in moments like that you turned to God.  And here I was in a school where He was Headmaster.  I walked through the front doors and looked around, making sure there was nobody inside.  I didn’t really know what to do.  I’d been going to church for over a dozen years, and I didn’t even know how to pray in one.  I just sort of walked up the aisle in a daze, and since nobody was around I went right up front to the altar.  I remember staring up at the gigantic wooden cross hanging over the choir pit.  Everything came to a head and I dropped to my knees.  I knelt on that altar and wept.  I cried and cried, trying to pray but really not saying much.  I was just angry and sad and confused and had absolutely no control over my emotions.  I was a mess.  I felt broken.  I thought I might actually be going crazy.  Or maybe I was all along.  For an hour I sat inside a darkened chapel and just cried.  An 18 year old “man” and there I was crying like a child.  I don’t say that as if it was shameful.  It just was what it was.  All that emotion I’d been holding in for a days and weeks and probably 13 years or more finally said enough! 

The craziest thing of all is when I finally rose back up to my feet and the tears stopped flowing and I caught my breath, I felt good.  It was the best I’d felt since I’d stepped foot on campus. 

Maybe I’d just cried it all out.  Maybe what I needed was a complete release.  I don’t know.  The problems I had when I went inside that chapel weren’t gone.  But I suddenly felt like I could approach them with new vision and new resolve, and maybe even a new strength.  As hokey as it sounds, I walked out of there feeling like a brand new man.  And honestly I was.  Call it a religious experience, or maybe an emotional breakthrough.  Something had come to me in there, in my moment of confusion and despair and pulled me out of irrational darkness.  Something put a hand under my chin, brushed me off and told me lift my head up and walk tall among the rest.  It was ok, even here, to stop trying so hard.  Of course I didn’t fit in because I didn’t know who I was yet.  All I had to do was just be me.  The secret that was revealed to me in that darkened chapel was nobody, no matter confident they proclaim it, knows who the fuck they are at 18.  And most of us at the tender age of 18 are a mess inside.  We remain that way for a long time.  It was ok to still be discovering who I was and who I was to become.  And damn it, I planned to.