Stiles is stripped
of sunlight and leaves. The afternoon's afterglow disappeared from the futon by the window I'm staring out of. The trees are naked and the triangle of green grass surprises November with its resistance to winter. Surrounded by thick, mock-Gothic walls to shut city out, this courtyard acts as if we're still medieval princes fearful of fealty. Far from truth. Only allegiance owed is from the invading college students to fix the city. Fast forward a week, tequilla sunrise for breakfast and loyalty lies with a color, a name. A wider invasion, hordes from the North, mostly. Harvard come to claim a weekend rivalry, revelry. Parents pull up outside Stiles. Sober, still. Atmosphere of a party multiplied by all the people participating. Alcohol flowing from strange sources, my good girl gone bad roommates' flasks, handles, turkey basters. Tailgating. Not the triumph of academia but lofty ivy towers sometimes downrazed. Razing an arm in greeting, down on the frontlines between battling tailgates of bulldog bites crimson, reunion warm with Charles. He hales me in the no man's land between the alternate universes of home and away students drinking in strict parallel, going shot for shot without acknowledging it. Joy of abandon. Existence in the element and the element is alcohol. After the chiasmus of Charles and I crossing party lines, exchanging histories, back to the blue. Katie's cheek bears a blue "0Y7" reflected by others. School spirit is diffracted, split and spread by a prism of alcohol. In the morning sunlight crowds flow associatively like thoughts and sentences. A friendly face forms from the mass, an individual emerges, surges with a group from the flag of one fiefdom's fried food to another residential college's spread where we are standing. Migration to the St. A's four hundred dollars spent all on alcohol. Part of sphere lost, replaced. Conversation continues. Organic sway of the day exists in proportion to the substances masking the fact that our mascot is not mere enjoyment, that this is not a natural way to spend a Saturday. But I am no longer enough of an outsider to appreciate this point of decency. Blur of The Game. Nauseating car. Home.
Stepping into Spring Street, I am astonished by the changes. None are radical but after only eleven weeks away from the apartment each detail strikes me. I am aware of the differences from a metal door at the foot of the first flight causing a claustrophobic feeling in the stairwell to a new nozzle on the showerhead. In my own room I am a pseudo-stranger among mementos Mom has mined from under my bed in my absence. While the rest of the house has not been on pause, my room rewound. Suddenly thrown in among old friends of photos, it seems too abrupt. After waking in window blind built shafts of sunlight at school, the time travel trip back to a night in high school room with only the odd, out of character transition of Harvard-Yale hazily between the two states seems strange. As I settle under covers of childhood, I think of Stiles stripped of students, the familiar seven walls of my Eero Sarineen single, and beyond it the courtyard, college and town, a week away and waiting for me to return and resume life playing in real time.
Stepping into Spring Street, I am astonished by the changes. None are radical but after only eleven weeks away from the apartment each detail strikes me. I am aware of the differences from a metal door at the foot of the first flight causing a claustrophobic feeling in the stairwell to a new nozzle on the showerhead. In my own room I am a pseudo-stranger among mementos Mom has mined from under my bed in my absence. While the rest of the house has not been on pause, my room rewound. Suddenly thrown in among old friends of photos, it seems too abrupt. After waking in window blind built shafts of sunlight at school, the time travel trip back to a night in high school room with only the odd, out of character transition of Harvard-Yale hazily between the two states seems strange. As I settle under covers of childhood, I think of Stiles stripped of students, the familiar seven walls of my Eero Sarineen single, and beyond it the courtyard, college and town, a week away and waiting for me to return and resume life playing in real time.
