Joe College

Joe College, Part 30

Dude, I texted Michelle, you have envelopes from Harvard Law and Princeton Graduate College.

Fat ones. Not skinny ones. Like they have course catalogs and shit.

OK, she replied. Shut the FUCK up Joe

A couple of minutes later, she wrote:

In stacks at library. Literally shaking.

Me:

Haha

Leave

Lets go get hammered

Lets blow off responsibilities

I walked to meet her at Charterhouse. I was no longer a golden boy who felt assured about his upward trajectory. I never would be again.

A week later, we had conversations about why a JD/Ph.D from Stanford might be better than a JD/Ph.D from Yale even though Yale's law school and history departments were considered better.

Harvard Law, Yale Law, Stanford Law, etc. Ph.D programs at those three, plus Princeton, Berkeley, Wisconsin, Michigan, Chicago, others that I'm forgetting. She swept every elite law school and history Ph.D program. I've known other people to sweep law schools or graduate programs; I've never heard of anyone doing both.

I should have been getting those kinds of letters too.

While I'd never wanted to become a lawyer, so many of my friends were going that route that it seemed defeatist and childish not to consider it. Maybe I'd let my dad's professional dissatisfaction snatch greatness from my paws. I could have been my generation's Oliver Wendell Holmes if my dad hadn't brainwashed me with his law firm woes. Maybe I would've been a close call at Harvard or Stanford, but I should've made the cut at NYU or Chicago.

Three more years of school sounded heavenly. Maybe I would never practice law, I thought, but the degree wouldn't hurt.

The prayer of aimless college seniors: "I feel like you can do anything with a law degree."

I briefly fixated on the University of Chicago. Read faculty bios, studied photos of the campus's medieval architecture, checked and re-checked the school's average GPA and LSAT ranges.

I could apply to Chicago in the fall after graduation, and when I got admitted for 2006, I'd have an actual reason to move to that city. In the intervening year, Chris would see that he didn't want to spend his twenties lost in the suburbs. He would miss me by then.

He could visit for a long weekend, things would evolve logically, and my Midwestern daydream would manifest for mature and practical reasons.

If it wasn't law school at Chicago, it should have been something. In junior year, I'd visited the office hours of an English prof, just to introduce myself and chat about Virginia Woolf. He'd been welcoming, and seemed to appreciate how much I liked the reading and his lectures.

"I didn't come here to talk about this," I said toward the end of our conversation, "but every once in awhile I think it might be interesting to maybe think about going on and getting a Ph.D."

"I know how seductive that can seem," he said, glancing behind me to his bookshelf, his voice softening, "but the academic job market is brutal. That's the biggest thing you need to consider. It's arbitrary, and it can be close to hopeless."

"Ah!" I said. "Well, it was only a thought."

"Let me tell you," he said, "I had the most wonderful graduate student. Great scholar, great teacher. The most charming person. Did her undergrad at Yale, wrote a fabulous dissertation on Lawrence. Could. Not. Get. One. Interview." He held up a finger. "Not one tenure-track interview."

"Wow, that's terrible." Hyperbole seemed appropriate. "Horrible, even."

"I did everything I could. Called friends, called strangers, hounded department chairs. I'm not just talking about the marquee schools you might think. I mean state schools that admit anybody, obscure schools, places where you probably wouldn't think to set foot. Not one interview. You need to consider that."

"Yeah," I said, "honestly, I hadn't thought that far ahead. I just enjoy everything that we're doing so much, there have been times when I thought it might be worth thinking about. It isn't a firm plan or anything."

He leaned back, recognizing that he'd unwittingly rattled me. "The wonderful thing about great books and great writers, it's that they never leave you. You don't need to be an academic to love them, re-experience them, be moved by them. They'll be your intellectual and emotional DNA without a Ph.D. You can love a work in ways that a specialized academic no longer understands. By the time someone leaves a Ph.D program, the passions for these texts can be wrung out. You don't need graduate school to have a lifelong relationship with these authors. They're always here for you." He leaned back in his chair, drawing in his lower lip in a way that looked like he was about to spit. "Or, you could get a doctorate from Harvard after having written the greatest dissertation of your generation, and the only place with an appropriate job opening at the time is -- I don't know -- a private high school in Westchester County."

"Ha. I actually grew up in Westchester."

"Well," he said cheerily, "maybe that would be perfect. I don't mean to be discouraging."

"Nah. I'd rather stay here."

That conversation didn't soften my jealousy when I thought of the options before Michelle, my sweet friend who I loved and whose success I cheered on, in a self-hating way.

Some of my friends at the newspaper would go on to paid internships or full employment at publications great and small, but my previous sad summer at a fading music rag had inoculated me from that virus.

"I'll be moving back to the City," I told people, still having no idea what that would mean. My insecurity didn't matter as long as I mentioned "the City." People appeared to be impressed, especially those who grew up near the City. For a certain category of people, saying you were "going back to the City" had the cachet of saying you were going to HLS or med school at Johns Hopkins; many of those people were assholes.

When I realized how well it went over, I was all about going back to the City. It was one of the first things I mentioned when I ran into people at parties -- that I'd be going back to the City after graduation.

Our spring break was in late February, and that year, Katie and Sam flew back to the City with me. I'd suggested it in earlier years, when people like Michelle left to Alternative Spring Break in Haiti or Honduras, frat boys with STDs went to Cancun and the rest of us daydreamed about going to Paris but lacked the resources or planning skills to make it happen. In the past, it had been a friendly suggestion for all of us to hang out in New York, but by senior year, I wanted them to move there after graduation. A few months later, a couple of them did.

Look, I could write you a chapter about that week, and if we weren't so deep into this project, I probably would. By now, you know us well enough to extrapolate from the bare details. We took the Metro North down to the City most days, except for a hungover rainy one when we stayed in my parents' living room, watching movies and driving to the grocery store for beer and junk food. We had no serious quarrels. Sam and Katie were charming with my parents. By day, I took them to museums and landmarks, walked them through the Village, Chinatown and Brooklyn Heights. At night, we met up with Jamie Calmet and the new friends I'd made the summer before, drinking in the East Village, West Village and Williamsburg. On Friday we stayed out until 4 a.m. and crashed Jamie's studio apartment; I shared Jamie's bed with him, and though I was wasted and scrupulous to face only a bare white wall, I nevertheless found our peaceful proximity vaguely erotic. I wanted so badly to sell Sam and Katie on a life in New York that I didn't directly raise it, for fear that being denied would bruise our wonderful week. Still, over the course of the trip, I felt this cloudy consensus -- that Sam would come to New York instead of California or London, and that, with no other clear options and no defined career path, Katie would follow us.

They all started getting jobs. I couldn't be bothered.

Sam accepted a position with a douchey and infamous investment bank headquartered a few blocks from my dad's office, and a couple of weeks later Katie took a job with a PR firm in Flatiron. Trevor took a management-consulting job in San Francisco. Michelle shuffled and re-shuffled her golden tickets.

Finance, consulting, law school, med school, staff writer gigs, Teach for America, Peace Corps. Those were the options of adults, and not the people who danced on my coffee table at 2 a.m. and passed out in front of bongs.

When it was five in the morning and I couldn't sleep, and I pictured Chris sleeping alone one floor below, I reassured myself that I had mastered my life. The stress of exams, research papers, the newspaper, my senior thesis -- I loved it all. I approached them the way that an athlete approached games.

Each night, I went to sleep knowing that I'd see my favorite people when I woke and do only things that I wanted.

I was better at being an undergrad than I'll ever be at anything else. >From beer pong to Chaucer to indie rock to Edmund Spenser, I found the person who I was meant to be, in a place where it was all accessible, where my enthusiasm was rewarded. That person had a life expectancy of three years and nine months, but he might still be the person I'm meant to be when I'm 65, and 75, and dead.

Maybe only lucky people get these windows. Some have childhood, some have high school, some have parenting. Most of the time I think of it as a negative -- a perfect life snuffed out through no fault of my own. Like, maybe I should have gone to Penn, and hung out with future finance drones, instead of a place that went from being this side of paradise to my own paradise lost. Then I think about my friends, and how lucky I was, and it kills my self-pity.

Only a few of us have a stage where every action feels fulfilling and correct. Then it concludes, and decades later the painting by your former five year old still hangs in the living room, or you remember the year you were elected to the homecoming court and your longtime crush said that she liked you too, or you look at your beloved, near-perfect photo of you and Chris Riis sitting next to each other on the front couch in junior year, glaring at the camera like it was trying spill your secret.

There was Chris, who I wanted to scorn for going back to the suburbs, even though we had the same plan: moving home without a clue.

We needed to talk again, even if those conversations were a lemon that chased the tequila shot. I would have been happy on the front porch with cheap beers, listening to CCR or the Stones, bullshitting about old music and reminiscing about Porch Club.

I looked for benign reasons to chat, hoping for cleaner air. He was reading for class and I said, "Yikes, Age of Innocence. It seems so slow until you realize it's the harshest thing you've ever read." He was watching Fargo in the living room and I said, "You have, like, the tiniest trace of their accent. Just the tiniest." I came back from the grocery store with Sam and said, "Dude, it's your lucky day -- we bought you pears."

He acknowledged the comments by tightening his shoulders, twisting his neck like he was working out a kink. His responses were cold marble: Yes, The Age of Innocence was pretty slow; he didn't think he talked like Fargo and not all of us could be from Westchester; the pear thing was so sophomore year.

Michelle received those acceptance letters on a Tuesday. I skipped afternoon classes to meet her at Charterhouse. We began drinking at 3 p.m., and I went on a text-binge to spread the news.

People always wanted an excuse to drink, and knowing someone admitted to Harvard Law School was a great one. By five o'clock, there must have been twenty people packed into the tables in the back corner. Always lax on IDs, our waitress eventually stopped checking.

At 8 p.m. the back half of the bar was as crowded as on a football Saturday. Pitchers, pizzas and ashtrays crammed the tables. People gave Michelle dollar bills for the jukebox, and when a new song started, she screamed and clapped, declaring that she loved that song, as if she'd forgotten that she selected it. Sam put our bill on his dad's credit card.

By 9 p.m., at least three people had stumbled to the floor when they stood to go to the bathroom. Someone had vomited in a sink. Trevor made out with a girl who looked like a freshman.

We departed for a bar named Michael's. We had the dance floor. I was giving Sam a piggyback ride and spinning. Trevor had moved on from the girl he'd been kissing at Charterhouse: he and Katie stood near a wall, whispering to each other, and then they kissed. Sam shouted when he saw this, shoved me, and we fell down. College Democrats danced the electric slide. This guy named Howard said Michelle would be the first Asian president. A drunk hot girl named Emily flirted with me; Sam told her that I was Joe College and gay and he was my lover, and when I pushed his shoulder he fell again. Hot-girl Emily approached Chris; ten minutes later he was alone.

Then Michelle was too drunk to make it until last call. Her neck was losing balance. When she sat alone at an empty booth, she immediately fell asleep. Sam and I took custody.

She batted our hands.

"You aren't going home by yourself," I said.

"No, it's fine," she said, slurring and struggling to hold her head upright. I hugged her around the shoulders. "Not Sam," she said. "I can't handle Sam like this."

"That's not very nice," Sam said. "You think you're superior now, because of Harvard."

"Make Chris take me," she said, breathy and fast. "Chris takes care of me. Chris and Joe. I want Chris to take me home. Not you, Sam." She pushed his lips. "You jabber. Jabber, jabber, jabber."

Chris was slow and sweaty.

"I'm on it," he said. "Joe's done this for me, what, fifty times?"

"Like, probably two hundred," I said.

I found her jacket. The March air opened my pores. I felt salted and smoked. My bouts with Sam had bruised my hip. Chris held her by the shoulders as we walked. I was the triage.

"I can't believe that I got into Harvard," she said. "Can't believe that I'm the kind of person who gets into Harvard. Me. Who the fuck is that? Joe? What the fuck."

"It's amazing. You deserve it."

"I don't even know if I want to go there, but even so. Daaaamn." The only other people on the street seemed to be walking home from labs or libraries. Michelle's words tumbled out, breathy and vehement. "And you should be going to Harvard. I don't know what you're doing. You should be doing amazing things. I know I'm wasted, but I mean that."

"Don't give me that much credit."

"No, I mean that," she said. "It makes me sad," she said, tears starting. "It breaks my fucking heart."

"Okay, okay. Lots of feelings today."

"No, you should be doing something awesome." She hiccupped. "But you don't even care, because you think that's not cool."

"Please stop crying. This is unnecessary." Christ. "I'm great. Tonight was so much fun, and you should be really happy."

"I am happy," she said, crying. "That's my entire point. My whole point is that I'm happy."

Chris and I swapped something like an eye-roll.

"You need to stop being so mad at him," she said. "You're ruining everything. You're ruining everything for everybody, acting the way you are."

"What else did I do?" I said.

"Not you."

"Me?" Chris said.

"Shut up," Michelle said. "I'm only doing this because I'm wasted. I'm only saying this because I'm wasted." She addressed her words to me. "Chris being a dick to you is ruining everything. I hate it so much. You were, like, best friends, and you love each other, and I'm so-" She stopped drunk-crying. "I'm so furious, and I don't understand why someone is acting this way."

"No!" I said. "Chris and I are cool. Right, Pieces?"

"Yeah, of course."

"We're cool, right?"

"Absolutely!" he said. His voice was bright. "This dude is the best. I frigging love this guy."

"You look at him like he's garbage. You talk like you can't stand him. It's making me hate you, even though I love you. That's why I'm so upset, seeing you act like this, because you were so fucking brainwashed, or whatever. You make me ill." She shoved away from Chris, lurched toward a brick exterior, caught herself, and sat on the cold sidewalk, back against the wall.

"Michelle, stop," he said. "You're blowing everything up. Even though I don't get what you're talking about."

She wiped her eyes. "Oh, right. Idiot. I know I'm some drunk girl, but you make me so angry." Michelle said to me, "You don't know this because you're out so much, but I talk to him all the time. Chris and I talk for hours. Literally hours and hours. I know him so well. And then it's like I don't know this person. Like I was wrong the entire time, and it turns out that he's a bitter, mad, paralyzed person. And Joe, you didn't even try to get into Harvard, and it makes me ill. Both of you make me ill."

"Dude, I know," I said, "but let's get home first and talk some more. Like, I get what you're saying."

She struggled to rise from the ground. "You don't. You're idiots. That's the thing. It's my entire point. Idiots."

"Okay," I said, offering my hand. "You really are the best though. It's so awesome that you got accepted."

"No," she said. "That's not what I'm even talking about anymore. But I know what I mean. You don't listen. You never listen. I may be wasted, but I know my words."

A couple of blocks later, as if the revelation hit her anew, she said, "You guys, I seriously can't believe that I got into Harvard."

She was asleep when I returned to her room with a glass of water. Chris stood at the end of her bed. His forehead was shiny.

"Dude," I said, "she loves you so much. It was, like, touching."

"Well. She loves you too."

"It was drunk talk."

Several seconds' pause.

"Bro," he said, heavy with meaning.

"It's cool."

We regarded her sleeping form.

"Cool," he said.

"Don't worry about it."

"Yeah, cool."

"Should we go back before last call?"

"I'll stay and make sure she's okay."

"Okay. I don't need to go."

"Okay."

Still he didn't look at me.

I went to my room thinking that I'd change for bed, but instead it took about 90 seconds to jerk off to Chris. Then I waited several minutes, thinking he may want to come up and "reconcile" to completion, but he obviously didn't, so I jerked off again, and that time it went faster still.

Then I wasn't even in the mood to sleep. Michelle slept face down, with her door open and lights on. Chris was in the living room watching ESPN preview March Madness. I went to the front porch with a new bottle of beer and a cigarette, because at that point, fuck respecting a weeknight.

"Hey," he said, stepping out. "Can I bum one?"

I passed the worn pack of Marlboros. He lit one like he knew what he was doing.

"It's cool being the more sober one," he said.

"I'm more sober but I'm still wasted."

"Me too," he said, "but not, like, horrible."

We surveyed our silent neighborhood. I looked to the house that once belonged to the Next Door Girls, and could almost make out the house down the block where Jamie Calmet and Doug once lived.

"She wasn't that wrong in the things that she said about me," I said.

"I know."

"I wish she'd say it sober."

"She says those things about you when she's sober," he said. "Just not to your face, I guess."

"Oh."

He exhaled cigarette. "But I'm not worried. You'll be okay, eventually."

"Yeah," I said. "Same for you. You'll probably be okay. After awhile."

"I'm good. I think, like, misapprehension. Nobody likes someone messing with their head. Getting caught off guard. That's what it was."

"I know."

"Now I understand that it was your way of, like, handling a bad situation, and it came out wrong."

"Yes." There was power in permitting him final word. I took a long drink of beer. "Yes."

I let it drift, until Katie's loud laughter wobbled down the block. Half-shouted chatter cut our quiet. Sam mounted the porch stairs and wrapped his arms around my stomach.

"I'm moving to New York," he said, holding me, "and I'm going to live with this person, and we will be together forever, for we are in love."

"Stop."

"I love you."

"No."

"Aruuugghhh." He reached for my belly button.

"Sam, stop." I swatted him away.

"If I were gay, we would be in love."

"No."

"Admit it."

"It's untrue."

"Fuck!" he kicked the decrepit porch couch. "Julie Brennan took my hand and put it on her boob. I didn't even have to try. She just did that. Fucking cool."

"Poor Julie Brennan."

"She has nice cans," Sam said.

"Smart of her not to let you get past boobhandling."

"It's my bedtime," Katie said. "I'm going in."

"Yeah, I'm tired too," Trevor said.

" `Night, player."

"Right," Trevor said.

When Trevor and Katie were inside, Sam said, "Those two are fucking."

"Yeah, I know," I said.

"Everybody knows that," Chris said.

"I meant, they're getting their fuck on tonight," Sam said. "Imminently getting their big old fuck on."

"You're not being clear," I said.

"Trevor will hump Katie."

"Please clarify," I said.

"Katie's going to ride Trevor's uncircumcised cock, via her wet pussy."

"Stop," Chris said.

"That's what they're doing," Sam said. He pointed his thumb at Chris. "This guy."

"You jealous?" I said.

"Of course."

"Katie's hot," I said, "but I could see her murdering a guy for a bad reason."

"I don't mean humping Katie, you stupid. The way he gets women. My room is next to his. I hear it."

"I'm sure."

"These rooms aren't soundproof, especially in the basement. Those walls are just, like, what's that called? Dry board? Katie gets loud."

"Okay," I said.

"Loud sex," Sam said.

"At least two people in this house can get laid," I said.

"I get play," Sam said. "I get plenty of play."

"From that one girl I never heard of."

"Pieces had that hot girl Amanda," Sam said.

"Yeah," I said. "She was hot."

"Guys," Chris said.

"What happened to her?"

"We're still friends. Nothing happened to her."

"Riis's pieces happened to her," Sam said.

"Bro, don't tease him about it," I said.

"Well -- never mind, I'm not going to say it," Sam said.

"Perfect. Self-censor more."

"It's unhealthy to self-censor. I have many feelings. We shouldn't repress. This is a safe space for feelings."

"A safe space for my balls," I said.

"Your balls are never safe around me."

"My poor, beautiful balls."

"That's the spirit."

"Yeah, this is going to be really hard not to hear every day," Chris said.

"Oh, you'll miss it," Sam said. "After a few months, you'll get lonesome and move to the City."

"That's never going to happen," Chris said.

"Too bad," Sam said. "I like you even more than I like Joe. We'll have to get our AIM accounts set up. I'll need to see your baby blues on my laptop."

Sam went inside for more beers. I retrieved my jacket, even though the upper-30s felt spring-like.

"To be slightly serious, all joking aside, the Trevor-Katie situation sometimes gets a bit sad though, right?" Sam said. "Not to make fun or meddle. No mocking. Safe space for feelings. They clearly like each other, hooked up since freshman year, but all this time never properly dated. Never signal affection when they're sober and people are around. They get wasted and get off with other people. Make out with strangers in front of each other. I watch them, and see how they're into each other, care about each other, and still they try to put on a show of indifference. As if, yes, they're casual acquaintances, who knew each other briefly and just happened to run into each other. Maybe a sad thing, right?" He drank. "It might have been happier for both of them if they'd been a couple, like normal people, and let it play out, whatever it wrought. It probably wouldn't have lasted through all of college, but they would have gotten over that and moved on. Probably would've been a more constructive way to do things. Instead of their sad, sticky mess."

I said, "Michelle gets into Harvard and everybody gets all drunk and emotional. She wouldn't stop talking on the walk home."

"Yes!" Sam said. "It's more real than 12 hours ago, yeah? There she is. She has a new chapter. It's all stopped being theoretical. It's very now."

"I can't think about it like that," I said, waving dismissal. "You're gonna make me get sad and freak out."

"And plus," Chris said, "it never seemed like Trevor and Katie were this huge, emotional deal. Like, probably they're just friends, and they're around each other and, like, comfortable with each other, and so they do it. Because it's available. Could be that they get stupidly horny and this is an outlet. Not a crazy romance."

"That's what I mostly assumed, when I gave it any thought," Sam said. He cocked his head like a setter. "I sound like a Tri-Delt who's obsessed with Dawson's Creek and lusts for her roommate's boyfriend, Bryce. I don't mean it like that. None of my business, not a word of it.

"Walking home with them tonight -- and I'm fairly hammered, I realized that -- I was giving them room, feeling like I shouldn't act like a twat, let them do their thing and shut up.

"So, back up. Let me explain how I met Michelle, and how you have me to thank for knowing that person. Freshman year, we both had 11 a.m. class on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I noticed her in the cafeteria during breakfast. I wanted to know this hot, put-together Asian girl, so I began to hit breakfast every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, eating my fucking French toast sticks and bacon and coffee, reading Joe's fucking hipster album reviews in the newspaper, because I knew that she'd be there at the same time. I'd sit at her table, try to flirt. She had no interest in me physically. I was like a pet bird. She has poise, this possession -- not tonight, but in life generally -- that seemed impressive. Even more impressive to me back then, and compounded when you realize that she isn't from privilege. Her parents aren't bankers or lawyers or physicians. Not remotely privileged, but she's better than all of us put together.

"I feel compelled to defer to her, or like I want to please her. And if not please her, entertain her. It gratifies me to exasperate her, within reason. I -- don't misinterpret this please, in this safe space for feelings that I'm attempting to build -- as I thought about that, maybe 20 minutes ago, I had this glimmering sense that I am possibly, in the slightest, mostly Platonic way -- look, it's very Platonic. I don't jack it to Michelle. That would be nearly sinful in an old-fashioned sense. No. I thought it might have been very nice if she were -- or something like a girlfriend. A sort of couple. Not a couple, or maybe. Mildly stung when she said she didn't want me to walk her home tonight, like I wasn't up to the task or she finds me untrustworthy. The tiniest sting. If either of you smirks, I will hack off your balls and send them to your mother--"

"Dude, no!" I said.

"I wasn't trying to discuss that. That isn't even why I'm talking about it. As I was thinking about my own -- it's the tiniest piece of sentimentality, the smallest. I considered Katie and Trevor, that they were acting like they were together. As in, finally. How they looked at each other, talked, walked together, the body language. Whole thing. Stupid me for thinking this way, but it was nice for them. They've been tense, for almost four years, tight about one another. As if they thought people would actually care or mock them. Maybe I'd make fun of them, but I'm a twat. Everyone knows I'm a twat. They think it's sub rosa, but it's obvious. Trevor's pot friends, his soccer bros. They're like sad middle-aged people having an affair at the office while everyone gossips behind their backs. Pathetic.

"A stupid way to live. I'm not a relationship person. Not many college relationships are for life, I'm sure. That would be sad, too. Embrace variety. I still say they would have been happier as a normal couple. Just dating, sex, acknowledging each other in a normal human way. No one says that they should get married. They hook up with the most disgusting losers. Katie especially -- horrible guys, exclusively horrible guys. That guy Andre looks like a walking herpe, Trevor's friend Gordon who sells pot to fraternities. Dirtbags. Fucking dirty, dirtbag guys. And Trevor with these idiots. Girls way less sharp and hot than Katie. I'm almost positive at our Halloween party last year, he and Nolan Dempsey tag-teamed that girl Naomi-"

"Naomi Kovac? That's so weird." Whoa. "Student government? That's seriously -- what the fuck?"

"Maybe!" He drunk-shouted. "Maybe that's good! I don't know for sure. Maybe we're the losers for not being hedonists! I'm not judging! I'm not fucking judging! Here I am with my bullshit family values, talking like a Republican, but it's true, people should be fucking everyone as much as they want, right now, because we won't do that when we're in our thirties and fat and old and ugly, so now is the time to fuck as many bodies in as many ways possible.

"Fuck this," he said, as I lit another cigarette. "I don't know what I'm saying. What is this mess, that I'm trying to say. I'm pillaging through secret histories of intercourse and repression, and there isn't a point. I hope everyone can get laid in a fulfilling and sane way. Who gives a fuck. I don't give a fuck. Get fucked by Andre, fuck scarecrows or throw pillows, it's fine as long as it works. I am a loser."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at," Chris said, "and I'm positive that it's not our business."

"Of course it's not our business," Sam said. "I said that. I acknowledged the fuck out of the fact that it's not our business. That's what you have to say?"

"So we should stop obsessing about personal lives," Chris said.

"Okay," Sam said, slur dropping to snarl, "I guess that's what I deserve for being candid, even slightly genuine. `Cock and balls and cunt and twat. Pieces, you fucking repressed hick.'" Sam's pitch jumped and he exaggerated his own accent; I was embarrassed to laugh, but my response seemed to calm him. "Happier now? I'm your trained monkey for insults and vulgarity, you sexually frustrated, judgmental redneck. Aren't I fucking hilarious?"

"It's not right to comb through other people's sexual stuff for gossip and my own BS," Chris said. "But hey, that's me. Guess that I'm the judgmental one."

"This guy," Sam said. Disdainful laughter. "Joe, I'm sure you of all people can relate to me wanting to beat a soul into this person."

"Dude, it's fine," I said. "Let's hear more of what he has to say. This is a safe space for feelings."

"Perfect," Sam said.

"I won't fight with you two about this stuff," Chris said. "I know you don't care what I think. You always have to make it shocking or a set-up."

"This is the opposite," Sam said. "I can't believe that's your takeaway from what I just said. I'm not sure what I was trying to say, but it was fucking real."

"Maybe I wasn't raised around that kind of talk."

"Your older brothers were in party frats," Sam said. "Wasn't Pete even president, or some officer? The first time I met him, he asked if I was getting laid."

"Well, that's my brothers. That's not me."

"Don't say it's how you were raised. It's untrue. The problem is yours and not upbringing."

"Okay, then it's me," Chris said. "I don't have to justify who I am."

"Don't justify who you are," I said. "You're fine. You guys experience these things differently, and you're both right."

"Don't stick up for him," Sam said. "He wasn't there when you needed him. He disclaimed you."

"I wasn't offended," I said. "Maybe he had a point."

"Can you believe what a good friend he is?" Sam said to Chris. "That's a good friend, who'll try to stick up for you after the coldhearted shit that you've been pulling about him."

"I don't know what shit I was pulling, but sure. I appreciate him," Chris said.

"We're cool now," I said.

"Wow," Sam said. He lifted his bottle until I clinked mine. "Cheers. You go far too easy on this person."

"Well, it's reasonable that you make each other crazy," I said. "You have opposite temperaments. The reason you've been good friends for so long is that you're both good dudes, and you balance each other. You know you're an abrasive asshole, Chris knows he can be reserved and aloof, so you're both, like, breaks from each other's personalities. And then sometimes you need to fight and hate on each other, because it's like warm fronts and cold fronts, and they meet, and there's a thunderstorm, and then it passes and things cool down. Right?"

"You're too fucking deep for me."

"Right, but it sort of makes sense," I said.

"Sort of," Chris said.

"It makes perfect sense," I said. "And none of it's worth getting upset about, anyway, because you're both just talking bags of water, that's all it is, water and impulses, and we're all excited for Michelle, but it's just the Harvard bags of fancy water saying, `We think you're high-quality water, you're a bottle of Perrier.' And it's awesome, but that's all it is. We're talking water, and water-derived substances. There's no point in being angry."

"Fuck," Sam said. "I that stuff you're smoking. That drug sounds magical."

"Give you $20 if you go to Trevor's room and ask him for pot."

"I'll do it!" Sam said. "You know I'll do it."

"You'll be like," Chris said, shifting to a Sam impersonation, "`Hey guys, do you need any help from me?'"

"Yes," Sam said. "`I'm a bit lonely and could hear you guys hanging out. Just came in for some company.'"

"A lot has been accomplished today," I said. "All of these feelings. Everybody's getting laid and going to Harvard."

"Half the house is getting laid or going to Harvard. The other half is aimless, drunk and unloved."

"Semantics," I said. "I'm not going to my morning classes. Fuck that. Let's stay up all night and smoke and drink and get fucked up and not give a fuck."

"It's what Michelle would want," Chris said. "Get me a beer, please. I'm going to go upstairs and check on her."

Sam's body language unclenched when Chris stepped away. "That dude," he said. "He was a bad friendship investment, wasn't he? Sometimes I wonder what if I'd picked Dave Greenberg to live with us instead of him."

I left my silence vague. He could interpret assent or disapproval.

"But you're right. I know. I still love him! I don't even know what I was trying to talk about. He was probably correct. I'll never say anything again. It's all great. Just great. So pleased."

I went inside to get more beers and ponder.

Michelle's admissions letters remained on the living room coffee table, unopened. I wondered whether I'd been wrong, and they were rejection letters instead. I held them and studied them, weighed their heft, touched the address labels. Definitely acceptances. Cleared for liftoff.

Offers of graduate admissions arrived nearly every day. Michelle arranged visits to Northern California and the Northeast. I got lost in elaborate fantasies about the University of Chicago. I spent about twenty hours a week on my senior thesis ("`Not Made to Live as Brutes': Hamlet, Quentin Compson, Dante's Ulysses, and the Burden of Knowledge"). As March slowly defeated winter in a tug of war, I envied friends who occupied their weeknights in bars and not the libraries.

Chris and I found our peace -- bloodless and pleasant. We made bland eye contact, chatted about sports and classes. Mostly I thought about him when I returned to the house late. He was watching movies or basketball, or had already turned in. Lying in my bed, I thought about the old nights when he came unexpected and needful. I revisited them with real and imagined details while I jerked off.

As I went about my days, I didn't think much about him at all.

He lived adequately, a person from my past, someone I regarded fondly, but with curiosity and absence of feeling. His body was in my sexual memory and I had nostalgia for our friendship. There was a new roommate named Chris, who seemed just fine, and carried on in the form of a person I once cared about.

Until a soft, warm April day with mud in my mouth and scrapes on my hands.

We were never closer than when he accepted my invitation to wreck me.