Archives: March 12-March 18, 2006

March 12, 2006

“ Preston —how's it hanging, buddy?” Barry asks, making his way into the Front Desk area. He heads straight for the forms in the next room.

“Not bad—busy times.”

“Yeah, no kidding—I've been reading your stuff in The Window . Those are some pretty big stories for a freshman to be writing.

“Well, I just kind of stumbled into it. The assignment was just write a story about the MTO getting their budget back.” I turn my attention to a kid walking up to the desk. “Hi there, how can I help you?”

“Yeah, can I get the ping pong stuff?”

“No problem,” I turn to get up and grab stuff to find Barry walking it over for me. All that's left for me is to grab the logbook for the guy sign, so we know who has the equipment out. “Thanks Barry.”

“Don't mention it. So it's wild how that story blew up—I don't know how you guys tracked it all down.”

“It was pretty hairy,” I stay vague, noting I probably shouldn't tell my RA about my adventures with Sam, breaking into a dorm room. “So what are you up to today?”

Barry waves a form in his hand. “Incident report. Was doing the rounds this morning, checking in on the residents only to find a beer can pyramid in Jeremy and Mike's rooms, almost as tall as me.”

Neither Jeremy nor Mike are 21, but they both have a reputation for partying. Mike's other claim to fame is playing as the starting shooting guard for the basketball team, a fact that gets him out of trouble on occasion, but doesn't do much with Barry. “Impressive.”

“Impressive engineering. Not as impressive that the guys didn't even bother keeping their door shut,” Barry says with a roll of his eyes. “It's like they wanted me to see it. That's all I need on Sunday—more paperwork. One of the glamour points of being an RA.”

There Barry goes again, with his recruitment efforts. As he's always reminding me, the deadline for the position is coming up real soon. I think about RA job and the News Editor job, and start to think about just what my next step is going to be.

March 13, 2006

“So I'm thinking on Saturday, you and me hit up the The Palace,” Matt says.

I laugh into my cell phone, making my way from Smith Hall to class. The Palace is a bar back home, a traditional spot for people to go to when they come home from college. “And I suppose you've figured out some way to get us in the door?”

“I've got it covered. I'll get you inside, and you buy me a beer—we'll call it even.”

“All right, if you say so.” Matt will be coming into town—back home in Shermantown—Friday night. I'll be leaving Saturday, leaving us just a couple day overlap. Seems as though a lot more people have Matt's Spring Break schedule, meaning I'll be going it alone when I get back to town. I suppose that makes it all the more important for us to make plans for when we're both in town.

“Speaking of which, I hear Julie's coming into town for that weekend before she goes for Spring Break in Palm Springs or someplace like that.” Julie was Matt's girlfriend the spring of our senior year. She was a girlfriend in pretty much the same sense Trista's his girlfriend now—a fuck buddy he doesn't really like, but likes well enough when she's naked and not talking.

“What about Trista?”

“Eh, we'll see if she's still in the picture then. Not like it'd break her heart anyway.”

I chuckle as I arrive outside the lecture hall. “All right bro, keep me posted on all that. I gotta go—I'll catch you later.”

March 14, 2006

I open the door, coming back to my room after dinner with Emma, only to have a ball thrown at my head.

“Aww man, you blew my shot,” Dave complains.

“Sorry,” I say, more than a hint of sarcasm, winging the foam ball at him. “What's up Mike?”

“Not much,” Mike replies. He hung out with us more in the fall semester, but still stops in every now and again when he's free now, and I suspect the basketball hoop is part of why he's hanging out. The two of them have taped off a make shift free throw line on the ground and I've caught them in the midst of a best of ten free throw shooting contest.

Dave makes his shot. “All right, that's six-for-nine.”

“That's six-for-ten, buddy,” Mike corrects him.

“Bullshit—that last shot doesn't count. He was opening the damn door.”

“Fine, six-for-nine, take your last shot.”

Dave banks his last shot in, and it's Mike's turn. Watching Mike shoot free throws is like art. Regardless of the forum—a plastic hoop in a dorm room—he takes it seriously. He's only missed two free throws in his college basketball career, and people say with a record like that he could have played Division II—maybe even DI if he was better on defense. Mike drains ten of ten, swishing all but one shot.

“All right, basketball star, you win this round,” Dave chides him. “You know I should have you on my beer pong team next time I go out.”

Mike laughs. “I'm all for it, as long as we're off campus. You guys here that Barry busted us over the weekend?”

“I heard about the can pyramid,” I say.

“Dumbass Jeremy had the door propped open to show it to the girls across the hall,” Mike shakes his head. “He's lucky—if it happened last semester it would have violated my reslife probation—I coulda been kicked out of the dorm.”

“You were on probation?” I ask.

“Yeah—drinking in the dorm. You get busted twice in the same calendar year and you're out. Not to mention coach would kick my ass.”

“All right, so we'll keep it off campus,” Dave laughs.

Mike smiles. “Come on, Preston , you and me—best of ten from the line.”

March 15, 2006

“I need the kick from the volunteers article!” Carrie calls from her desk.

“I thought I printed it out,” Sam calls back.

Carrie raises two pages in the air and turns them backward and forward to demonstrate what she has.

“All right Preston , print that out for her,” Sam concedes.

“Wait, what's kick?”

This is my first late night in The Window office. To be fair, it's only 11 p.m. at this point, but I foresee the night getting a lot later. Sam encouraged me to come in for this Wednesday, to get a feel for what goes on behind the scenes. Since late afternoon, he's been educating me on terminology and training me on the layout software. Each time he asks me to do something, I start to feel a little more like I'm in over my head.

“It's the continuation of the article,” Sam says, flipping through an issue of the paper from some past year. “Like when it says, see page three—the kick is the part of the story that continues on page three.”

“Gotcha,” I say, remembering and turning to the news computer. “Which page am I looking for?”

“Five,” Carrie says.

I find the page and follow the steps to print. I surprise myself by remembering the steps correctly—converting the file to a PDF, then reopening and sending it to the laser printer. Nothing's simple in this office, and it's a joy to hear the print whir into life. A sign of success.

It's a minor victory, though as Sam grabs the printout and hands it to Carrie for editing, and the night continues.

March 16, 2006

It's the last night before most of the dorm will be heading out of town for Spring Break. With that in mind, the dorm is nuts, people chattering, running through the halls, loud music playing. I don't envy Barry's position this evening.

“Hey boys, what's going on,” Mike says, stepping through the door.

“Not too much,” Dave says, feet propped on his bed as he sits in his desk chair, flipping through the pages of a news magazine. I have a suit case propped open on my bed, into which I'm tossing all of the essentials for my trip back home. Emma's playing solitaire on my computer.

“Well I'm heading to a party off campus. You guys want in?”

“I could be game for that,” I say.

“Where is it?” Dave asks.

“Right on Newmar Street .”

“Wait,” Emma says, “Is some guy named Jamal hosting this thing?”

“Yeah, him and a couple other guys from the team.”

“Then that's the same party Veronica was telling me about.”

I shrug. “You wanna go then?”

*

The apartment isn't very large, or clean. Truth be told, it kind of stinks with beer and sweat. Nonetheless, with the music pumping and the volume of people there, I have the sense that I'm at one of the better parties in Butterton tonight.

Mike walks up to the beer pong table and immediately calls the right to play the winners. The guys playing are all big, athletic looking guys, probably all from the team. Regular beer pong isn't enough for them, and they all shoot the ball behind their backs—and still show decent accuracy.

As Dave steps out to smoke a cigarette with a friend of his he sees just inside, Emma and I work our way through the people. Reaching the keg, we have to pay four dollars each before the guy standing there will give us plastic cups. The guys must be making a fortune, but then it's not like us freshman have many alternatives.

“Emma! Preston !” We turn to see Veronica beckoning us over. She's sitting on the couch with another girl from The Off Beats—I think her name's Claire. They have about ten other people, guys and girls, sitting on the ground, making a circle with them.

We head over. Most of the people here are sweating, but Veronica really does glow. She smiles—for a second it seems like she's just looking at me. I smile back.

“We're going to play spin the bottle,” the girl she's sitting with says. “You guys should join in.”

“I don't know—” I start.

“Yeah, isn't this kind of eighth grade?” Emma asks.

“Oh come on, it'll be fun,” one of the guys says, by which he means he wants an excuse to make out with my girlfriend. I think this might not be such a good idea.

“Yeah, and it's not like it's cheating if you're both playing—it's just a game,” Claire throws in. My eyes shift to Veronica as she sips from a bottle of Smirnoff. Our eyes meet and she lifts her eyebrows just a tiny bit.

“All right, I guess I'm in if you are,” I say, touching Emma's back.

Emma shrugs and take a seat in the circle, to much cheering. One of the guys produces an empty beer bottle, leans into the middle of the circle and gives it a whirl. I down a gulp of beer, figuring it'll be better not to be too sober for this game.

The game starts pretty low key with some kisses on the cheek, or light pecks on the lips. But about ten to fifteen minutes in, it intensifies a bit. We start seeing some tongue, some holding.

The bottle lands on Emma for the first time then. She giggles, glances at me, then stands to meet the guy. He's a short guy with a little stubble, hair all gelled up. They kiss. He presses in her a little but Emma backs away, to some laughs. Emma sits back down beside me a little red. After a deep breath, she spins the bottle herself.

In a stroke of luck, the bottle lands on me. We both smile and someone says “Aww.” We kiss, briefly, but open-mouthed, asserting we're together.

I kneel and reach out to get the bottle, which has rolled toward the couch. Veronica stoops and picks it up. We lean toward one another and I catch a whiff of her hair. It's got a fruity scent to it—really nice.

Leaning back, I spin the bottle. After a few rotations, it slows down, angling toward the couch.

I'm a little surprised by just how disappointed I am as it lands on Claire. I look up at her and she smiles. She's a pretty girl—blond like Emma but she wears her hair a little longer and is a little heavier set. We stand and meet in the circle. I touch my lips to hers, then feel my lips pushed apart as she flicks her tongue against mine. There's a “Woo!” from someone behind me. I glance at Veronica, who smirks and says, “Bravo.”

I sit back down next to Emma, who's a little more red than before. I throw back the rest of my beer, then head off to grab another.

March 17, 2006

“Okay, now you can keep going straight, and when you get to the second light, you're going to take a left,” I say from the backseat.

I'm catching a ride home with a guy named Mark, who I went to high school with. We're friendly, but not really friends and I'm riding with them out of convenience as his older brother was coming to pick him up and drive him back to Shermantown anyway.

The ride has been a little awkward. The two of them obviously have more to talk about with one another than I do with either of them, but out of a sort of courtesy, or maybe because they would prefer privacy, they don't talk much with me there, making it a pretty quiet ride.

It's strange wheeling past all of the old places I've known. This is my first time coming home since Winter Break, and without the mounds of snow to greet on my way back into town, it's a little sad to look around. It's early evening and dark out, melted snow lining all of the sidewalks marking the ugly beginnings of spring time.

Mark's brother follows directions well and soon, his beat up maroon Oldsmobile is turning into my drive way. I thank them and climb out of the car, suitcase at my side. As the car pulls away, I stand for a minute, staring at the old house.

I exhale, the fog of cold escaping from my mouth, and whisper to myself, “Welcome home.”

March 18, 2006

My old man was a pretty high profile trial lawyer in Shermantown. Growing up, I would see his name, if not his picture, on the front page of the local paper at least once each year. He was popular around town because he took the right kind of cases—he represented a woman in her civil case, when she sued a drunk driver for damages after he killed her husband. He stood tall alongside local business owners, trying to keep a large chain store out of town. My dad was a champion of the people, known for defending folks who were in the moral right, even if they weren't necessarily in the legal right, which made his wars in the courtroom all the harder fought and all the more celebrated.

I didn't see a lot of dad growing up. His work always kept him busy. Then, the summer before I headed off to college, everything changed. John Burns was a different man after my mother left him.

As much as most people like my dad, people weren't exactly outraged to hear that my mother had left him. There's a balance there—people love and respect the work he had done, but when they look at exactly how much time he put into that work—15 hour days when he was working on a case, besides working most weekends—it's not so difficult to understand how my mom got lonely or felt underappreciated. She left and moved down to Florida to co-manage her sister's restaurant. Legally, my folks aren't divorced. My dad holds out hope she'll come back. From when my most recent conversations with Mom, it seems my mom is just getting settled in down south.

My father is starting his day late today. He woke me at 8 a.m. for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. “How are your classes?” he asks over the brim of a glass of orange juice. We sit across the kitchen table from one another. Two leaves have been removed from the table, leaving it smaller—more appropriate for one or two people to eat, though the kitchen itself remains awkwardly spacious. Sunlight pours in on us from the windows and the door leading out to our back deck.

“Not bad,” I reply, groggy and in my disheveled state. I wear a t-shirt and pajama pants while my dad is already clad in his shirt and tie. “Have this one class on British lit—I'm not crazy about the reading, but the professor's great—really—”

I stop at the ring of Dad's cell phone—two beeps in quick succession. A pause, then two more. He flips it open. “This is John. Yes, I'm still home, Margery, what's up. You're kidding me, right? All right I'll be right in—no, don't worry about it, I'd rather handle this myself.” He slaps shut the phone, and puts in back in its holster while he drinks what's left of his orange juice. “Sorry, Preston , duty calls.”

“Understood,” I say, still groggy enough that I don't care.

“Take care of the dishes when you're done, will you?”

“You got it, Dad.”