Our atmosphere: a thin blue line holding space above the ground.

I


t was the usual Sunday morning scene featuring me, Matthew and Leah. The major difference was that we didn't immediately launch into alcohol. The other two had to work today, you see.

Matthew is full of amusing stories about local cultural entities. This fact no doubt lies behind my unusual fondness for the boy. Today he told me about the job of a ladder runner at the C&O. The ladder runner is the guy who makes sure that food and information from the somewhat unsavoury kitchen in the basement reaches the waitresses in the snazzy five star French restaurant on the first floor. The physical connection between the waitress station in the restaurant and the kitchen below is a narrow treacherous ladder. Making sure that a butter-baked duck, faceless wine-boiled crab or sesame noodle salad finds its way up the ladder unscathed is not for the faint of heart. Accidents are always just a miscalculation away. Furthermore, the cooks have to know how a patron wants his food prepared and the waitresses upstairs have to be given detailed instructions on how food is to be served. The task requires communication skills, dexterity, memory and a certain amount of will power.

It seems that the ladder runners can't help but repeatedly gaze up the miniskirts of the upstairs waitresses all day long as they hand them the dishes.

Will power? Matthew says that Raphæl and Morgan Anarchy, both of whom worked for a long time as C&O ladder runners, had tales to tell on the subject of will power. It seems that the ladder runners can't help but repeatedly gaze up the miniskirts of the upstairs waitresses all day long as they hand them the dishes. Both Morgan and Raphæl have found themselves having to take a break at some point in the shift for the purpose of relieving accumulated sexual tension. Leah found this story to be "weird." I thought it was hilarious.

Speaking of weird, one night recently, Theresa slept in bed with Leah and Matthew. At some point Leah and Matthew began having sex with each other (it's their bed, they reason, and sleeping with them carries certain risks). They thought Theresa was asleep, but later she admitted to them that she'd been turned on by their behaviour and had been forced to masturbate.

M


atthew wanted to go out for breakfast, but I didn't want to eat breakfast food. So we decided to go get Chinese food. Matthew called around to the various places to track down a vegetarian buffet. Most people working at Chinese food establishments have no understanding of the American vegetarian. I think the Chinese wonder in amazement why anyone would deliberately want to forego meat. And even a vegetarian should gladly eat chicken!

We went to Chiang House Restaurant, which is housed in a big neon-blue faux-oriental building on 29 North. It features Chinese food and sushi.

Gossiping about Deya's sexual interests and Monster Boy's reaction to them has become an especially entertaining diversion.

We loaded up our plates with food, me especially. I dove right in, but Matthew and Leah, who try their best to be vegetarians (even stigmatizing each other should they stray), inspected their things and, as they discovered meat, handed items to me. It turns out that there wasn't much they could eat except for the sushi, which was cheaply prepared. It was loosely-packed and didn't even have the seaweed-leaf skin. The wasabi was weak too. In about fifteen minutes, I'd enhaled an heaping platter of greasy, meaty MSG-laden food. The other two ate much more slowly, periodically grumbling in a good natured way about the choices available to vegetarians. Another worthy topic of grumbling was the housemates. Gossiping about Deya's sexual interests and Monster Boy's reaction to them has become an especially entertaining diversion. Then there's the subject of Monster Boy's sexual interests. He's a masochist of sorts, but we find it difficult to imagine Deya giving him any sort of punishment. A new topic of complaint today was Monster Boy's lack of generosity.

Since they'd been eating sushi, Matthew and Leah didn't have the grease and MSG intoxication from which I suffered. Somehow I was able to drive.

We went to a K-mart. I was looking for materials with which to do auto body repairs on my Dart. Matthew was looking for a fly fishing rod. Leah was looking for some kind of super-adhesive (always a good thing for the girl who wants to break things more than once). Speaking of Leah's breaking things, the knee she hit with a wine bottle over a week ago was acting up again. None of us found any of the things we were looking for. Matthew was wearing spiked bracelets, and in frustration he slashed boxes with them as he walked down the aisles.

On the way back home, we stopped in at a couple UVA buildings and stole toilet paper from the rest rooms. Some janitor in Olssen Hall forgot to lock down the gigantic wagon-wheel-sized rolls in the men's room. Now we have enough toilet paper for the duration of our lease. Meanwhile, there must be some stinky behinds in the Electrical Engineering Department. As if those geeks don't have enough social problems.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Aquarius Central, we were joined by Deya. A spur of the moment idea organically evolved into a drive to see Peggy and Zach at their new place high on Carter's Mountain. We knew only that their new place was somewhere near the top of the mountain, and off we went, Matthew driving as he usually does when sober: manic, with a casual attitude towards the value of a long life. I had a jug of vino, which slowly had its impact on me. I shared a little with Leah. Maybe Deya had some.

But to the east, there is nothing but the flatness of the Piedmont marching slowly downward around the warp of the Earth's surface and into the Atlantic Ocean.

I think I've only been up Carter's Mountain one time in my life, and that was on February 28th when I was in blackout and ended up kissing Theresa Venesian. During the day, the drive is nothing if not spectacular. The winding gravel road to the top is bent with numerous switchbacks through deep forest. Suddenly, near the top, you break out of the woods into a great meadow that, owing to its position high on a mountain above the lowlands, appears to have been cleared by the harshness of the conditions. This isn't the case of course; even by Appalachian standards, Carter's Mountain is but a nasty pimple. What makes Carter's Mountain unique is not its height, but the fact that it is a prominence on the eastmost ridge of the Appalachians. To the west lies the Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah Valley, and ultimately, the great Allegheny Plateau of West Virginia. To the northwest lies the tiny buildings of Charlottesville, which Zach later referred to as "the toy town." But to the east, there is nothing but the flatness of the Piedmont marching slowly downward around the warp of the Earth's surface and into the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond that lies funny continents populated with exotic birds and alien peoples. There are few places in the world where you can stand so high and look out over such overwhelming flatness. Attention is drawn to the flatness by the different colours in the layers of the air lying directly over it. I felt almost as if I was seeing Virginia's Piedmont from outer space.

I've long known about the meadow on Carter's Mountain. After all, you can see it from Charlottesville. I'd thought it was just a sheep meadow. But actually, it's a massive apple orchard. Some of the trees are old and spaced well apart, while others are small and grow like rows of corn. Today much of the operation smelled like vomit; apparently poultry excreta was being used as fertilizer. On the south end of the meadow is a massive installation of radio and microwave equipment.

Eventually we found a secluded little community of houses a short ways down the east slope from the summit. In front of the largest was the battered and dented red Toyota Racecar that has been Peggy and Zach's fairly reliable mode of transportation for about a year now. Soon too we found Zach and he showed us the new place. It's a tidy little basement apartment in the big house. The floor is made of stones set in a matrix of concrete. I have no idea where Peggy and Zach raised the money to secure the place. And I wonder what fraction of the rent pays for the view.

Meanwhile Peggy was off exploring some nearby abandoned houses with some older woman from an upstairs apartment.

There's something about my upbringing that makes it nearly impossible for me to do such things.

We didn't stay long; Leah had to get to work. If even once more she's late showing up for a shift at Fresh Fields, she's fired.

So down the mountain we drove, then around the downtown congestion via the 250 bypass to 29 North. As he drove, Matthew became increasingly reckless. I usually prefer riding with him when he's had a lot to drink. The kicker was when he ran a red light on 29 North, one of the most congested highways in North America. He simply looked both ways and went on through. There's something about my upbringing that makes it nearly impossible for me to do such things.

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D


eya and I listened to an old vinyl record from my childhood on the newly installed record player in the Kappa Mutha Fucka living room. It was the tale of Heidi, as told by Walt Disney, Inc. I probably hadn't listened to it since I was eleven. It was all strangely forgotten. I couldn't recall any of the music at all. Only snatches of the narration were familiar, as was the overall theme.

There's something pleasantly erotic about an orphan girl hanging out unsupervised with a shepherd boy named Peter.

I explained to Deya that the tale of Heidi created some of the basis for what later turned into the sexual sector of my psyche. There's something pleasantly erotic about an orphan girl hanging out unsupervised with a shepherd boy named Peter. I still occasionally have sexual fantasies about stumbling across friendly shepherd girls in settings that look remarkably like the top of Carter's Mountain.

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