May 17, 1997, Saturday

Moral question: You drop a friend's toothbrush in the toilet accidentally. What do you do?

In spite of being permanently banned from campus back in 1990, I went to the library's 2nd floor and walked into the Macintosh lab.

T


he monumental austerity of the cubist vagina that is Mudd, the Oberlin College Library, is still faintly spattered from an incident in the Fall of 1994 when someone tossed glass flourescent tubes full of paint high against the front wall. In spite of being permanently banned from campus back in 1990, I went to the library's 2nd floor and walked into the Macintosh lab. All the floors of Mudd are colour coded. The second floor is red. Third floor is yellow.

Back in 1990, I used to keep my journal as Microsoft Word files. I recall working endlessly on my journal in this same 2nd floor Mac lab. The Macs in those days were cutting-edge IIcx's. Now they're all 80 MHz Power Macs. They are surprisingly useable. They aren't hobbled in the least, and they have all the software I know and love: NCSA Telnet, Fetch 3.0X, SimpleText, Adobe Photoshop 3.0X and Netscape. Netscape 2.02. It's primitive and doesn't really do Java, sure, but it reads email reliably. I composed yesterday's entry with a minimum of frustration, though in my haste the result was a minefield of typos and missed events [which I took care of later].

On Main Street near Annie's Pizza, I had the unnerving feeling that I was on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville. There was Sundew. She's an attractive blond girl who lives in a huge well-aportioned house in Charlottesville's Fratville. Jatasya introduced me to her, though she is also good friends with Diana the Redhead. Back in the Fall of 1995, Jatasya and I used to sneak into the basement of Sundew's house and sleep in a waterbed there. Often we did so without anyone in the house knowing. Sundew is now an Oberlin College student. She's following a surprisingly similar path to the one I started on back in 1986. Like me, she had intentions of becoming a biology major. And like me, she lived in a Co-op her Freshman year. But there are differences too. She lived in Tank Co-op, which is a ways to the east from the bustle of the center of campus where my Co-op, Harkness, is located. And I was later to learn that this was to be her last year of Oberlin. I stuck it out for three years.

I noted that Sundew may have become even more of a hippie since attending Oberlin College. She looks like the sterotype: the long skirt, the unshaved armpits, the long straight hair, the benevolent look, the sandals. She invited me to come to Tank and visit her later.

I tried to track down Rippy again utterly without success. So I drove my Dart up to Johnny's wine shop out beyond the north end of town and picked up a 12 of Honey Brown Ale and a not especially large bottle of red Almaden vino.

Over at Tank I visited Sundew in her room (306). She's a Virgo, so even in the chaos of moving out, her place was tidy and uncluttered.

In all fairness to Northern Ohio, I have to say that this year has not been representative of the years I have known.

Sundew is leaving Oberlin mostly because of the climate. She hates the fact that it rains all the time and that weather today, which would have been considered sweater season in Charlottesville, was considered unusually warm. In all fairness to Northern Ohio, I have to say that this year has not been representative of the years I have known. And I've seen some things. For example, in May of 1989, snow fell and briefly accumulated on the grass during a brief storm. Oberlin is a very cloudy, rainy place. It is, after all, where I coined the term "Five O'clock Day." But usually in May it's hot in Oberlin.

Sundew intends to spend the summer traveling with Diana the Redhead before settling down in Boulder, Colorado, where her mother and stepfather are moving.

We drank vino and talked about all sorts of things. She is still upset about something I said to her a year ago at Big Fun's Nomadic Festival. I'd told her (or implied) that she is shallow. This is because her beauty has limited the expectations of others. It was a mean thing to say at the time. She says that reason she was upset was because she thought I was (at least to an extant) correct in my assessment.

I expressed surprise that Sundew had managed to spend a whole year in Oberlin without cutting her long blond hair. Sundew agreed that it was amazing. She said she considered cutting it at least five times. Sundew has a rather good relationship with her current roommate, named Libby. She is Sundew's third roommate. Libby has very short hair.

We went out to the porch and watched her dorm-mates. Two girls were talking dismissively about the sexual desires of boys while doing tricks on the swing hanging from the massive White Ash. Another set of girls were spray painting stencil designs on tee shirts (and, incidentally) the sidewalk.

We'd go visit Jason Meyers, one of the least politically-correct and most sexually-frustrated young men on campus.

Back in the Winter of 1987/88, my girlfriend Joy Powley and I used to go to Tank Co-op every now and then. We needed a little change of pace from the usual vegetarian/lesbian scene. Tank smelled better too. We'd go visit Jason Meyers, one of the least politically-correct and most sexually-frustrated young men on campus. Jason went on to become a frat boy and study law in San Diego (and, incidentally, perform as understudy to El Duce of the Mentors, but that's another story). Anyway, one of the people in Tank in those days was a big dude named Will Speck. He had a reputation as a womanizer; among the people he subsequently womanized included Heather Bissel. One day when Joy and I were hanging out with Jason, Will came by and invited Joy to come with him to see the Tank attic. I suppose I foiled his plans by coming along too. The attic is tall and unfinished. Mysteriously, it is white. But if one scratches through the white wash, one hits black charcoal. Tank has had fire somewhere in its past.

Fast forward to today. Sundew and her dorm mates had never been in the attic. I suggested they come with me to see. So we climbed up in there and had a look around. Everything's the same, except now their are suspended metal troughs filled with ethernet cables. Oberlin College is one of the hundred "most wired" in the nation. We carved our names into the charcoal. I included a web address in my graffiti.

We, along with Libby, some boy with a dorky voice, and Sundew's little calico kitten, sat dangling our legs off of a tiny little porch outside Sundew's window. In another room, we smoked pot. At some point I departed.

I think the laugh is related to social nervousness; it usually comes on the heels of a bit of innane commentary.

I


  ran across Dirty James and a friend named Sean and I drove them back to Dirtyhouse. Sean is a sort of unflamboyant alterna-dude. The thing that is most disturbing about him is his conversational style, which is exactly like Bad Beef's, although it isn't quite as irritating. Sean and Bad Beef have EXACTLY THE SAME LAUGH. I couldn't get over it. I refrained from pointing any of this out; it would have taken far too much work to explain. I think the laugh is related to social nervousness; it usually comes on the heels of a bit of innane commentary. Perhaps it reflects a chemical imbalance that Bad Beef and Sean share. Whatever the condition might be, it is unrelated to body metabolism; while Bad Beef is big and fat and growing ever fatter, Sean is thin.

We sat around drinking beers. James was dissatisfied by the lack of female company. I probably used the term "sausage party" to define our predicament, and no doubt I didn't have to define this term. I suggested we go to Tank. James asked, "are there gonna be any girls there?" I assured him there would be.

There were lots of girls in the room where we found Sundew, so I didn't let Dirty James down on that. There was a problem though. It seems some girl there had a problem with James (I don't know what; perhaps he broke her heart on one occasion). So when James was politely asked to leave, Sean and I decided to go with him.

His room (Harkness 303) was called "Frank's After Hours" and was a notorious late-night hang-out place, a sort of Horrid Crash Pad of Oberlin.

We went next door to a shoddy low off-campus student house that once bore the name "Iguana House." That's where Dirty Frank lives. Dirty Frank is sort of an intellectual and born elder statesman. The year before last, his room (Harkness 303) was called "Frank's After Hours" and was a notorious late-night hang-out place, a sort of Horrid Crash Pad of Oberlin. Almost every party he ever had was a sausage party. But the lack of female company wasn't so bad; Frank had access to cool drugs like opium. I'll never forget the night I drank his rank but powerful homemade absinthe concoction and went into 4am trance. Another time I was there when Leslie Montalto showed up and I teased and humilated her so relentlessly that she fled from the room in tears (Dirty James has had the utmost respect for me ever since).

Frank's house was the singularly most devastated house I've ever been in. The floors were littered by piles of crumpled paper, mangled magazined, beer cans and pizza boxes, mixed in with a healthy dose of useable but soon-to-be crushed beyond function household items.

We didn't stay there long; I drove some of us to a party on Elm Street. I drank a few beers and passed out in a chair while the party raged around me. Sundew showed up, as did Catfish, Oberlin's most notorious womanizer and former resident of the infamous House With Nuts In It (1992-93). When I awoke from my coma, I staggered out to my Dart and crashed in the back seat.

I awoke long after the party had died out. I didn't know what street I was on, so I started driving. I was amazed to find that I'd been on Elm Street, not far at all from Harkness. I drove down to Dirty House and crashed on a comfortable couch in the living room.

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