"Check this out," Bart says, giggling. On his phone, he's pulled up a picture of this girl we know, in full clown makeup.
"Why is SAIC like that?" I say. It's a hot and muddy Wednesday afternoon, and we're sitting on a bench by the campus center watching the new freshman walk around. There's not much to report. Their pants are bigger than ours were.
"Have you ever been to Chicago? Is that your girl?" Bart nods across the quad.
Jane is walking out of the parking lot across the field in an unseasonable black trench coat and navy track pants.
“That’s Jane, you met them.”
“You still talking?”
I sigh. “Yes, we’re still talking.”
“When are you gonna settle down, man?”
“I don’t--Geez, man. It’s not like, real.”
“I’m kidding.” Bart squints. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m 21 years old. All this dating shit is practice. Or not even... It’s just nice, nothing else.”
“But you get so fucked up about it. I just think you could slow down a bit.”
I sigh again. “Isn’t that what college is?”
“College is a four-year effort in learning skills for the workplace.”
I wish I had the money or the sense to think like that. “Whatever. How’s your girl?”
“Beth and I are good right now. I think-”
I stand up, gripping the shoulder straps of my Jansport. “Well, don’t come to me for advice,” I say, forcing a laugh.
“Alright, man.”
I walk towards the parking lot, waiting to get Jane’s attention. I remember I have an art history seminar on Western dress, a Cinema of Iran screening and owe Tracy a pasta dinner. I remember to keep my interaction with Jane short, to not get carried away into some hang-out situation. I can not forget my own interests, nor can I forfeit them for a strong mutual one, like sex. I am a student first.
I haven’t thought much about Jane lately, anyway. Their mother’s apartment, maybe, or the thing they said about the Clintons, but not them and not us. I am not a lonely person, and I do not think I am in need of anything romantic right now. That is an unnerving observation when I consider my longing for certain individuals and the unrelenting base level of lust in my life--noticeable in my strict recording and reference to my sexual encounters and relationships. Romance is a simple thing to pursue, especially in school, surrounded by hormonal people who often feel the same about it. Love is a more sensible construction than work; its future is not threatened by global economies or disrupted industries. I don’t write this shit to say that I am in love, or ever have been. I think I like to dangle it over the heads of people, girls, not like mistletoe, but like bait. I enjoy, more than most things, to play a role in someone’s fantasies. Often, things go poorly. More recently, I have found myself convinced that I can change, that so-and-so could strike in me something true, a real affection. In those same thoughts, I realize that if I cared so much for someone, I would want to spare them my presence entirely. And yet, I promise dinner to Tracy (nothing there), fend off Eve (a left-field arrival), and walk confidently towards Jane (who wouldn’t?).
It’s all bullshit. If Miranda were here, I’d forget all of it.
Jane smiles as I approach and asks how I’ve been. I say something about my classes and something about the bar. They talk about their books for a French Literature course, and about how Springer’s DIY club should book better bands and then we go on a bit about how cheap beer is in the Hudson Valley. “Is the ground going to be wet most days,” they say, to which I nod and say, “Yeah.” There is a lull in our conversation where Jane looks down at my shoes where I find myself wondering what’s so different about them. I am thinking as if the angsty Jane of our sunny and quick summer has been spirited away for some cool and collected Angeleno.
“You liking it here?” I stammer.
Jane’s gaze drifts off for a second. “Yes. There’s a lot more going on up here--well, academically. It’s different. I finally have shit to do.”
“Sure.”
“I do see how someone could find it depressing, though.”
We part with a short kiss, and I watch them head towards the music building, their beat-up messenger bag swinging behind them. I walk back to the library.
By October, Professor Friend and I have established an advisory relationship for my senior thesis, and in turn, the library granted me a carrel. I have begun to leave books necessary for my research there, and occasionally, stop by to read a few chapters of something. I have few classes this semester, as I frontloaded my undergraduate career with 8-credit coding workshops and graphic design bootcamps. I found nothing interesting in them, and turned back to art history.
This morning, I decide to spend a few hours reviewing notes on the crewneck T-shirt, as I gather material for a chapter. When I emerge from the staircase onto the third floor of the library, I notice a figure in sweat clothes sitting behind a laptop, at my carrel. It’s Eve; as a dance major, she must not have a carrel.
“You never hit me up,” she says.
“I never got your number,” I say, already worrying that I won’t get enough done before lunch and will throw the day away instead.
“I figured you’d DM me--Oh, shit, do you need to sit here?”
“No,” I say, “it’s no biggie, just need to grab some books.”
“It’s not a problem, I can move. I’m nearly done with this.”
“Take your time,” I say.
Eve lifts her laptop and moves to the carrel directly beside mine. “There,” she says, “no more problems.” She’s maybe a little irked.
I settle in, flicking through a small notebook I’ve labeled “Americana.” I open a 450 page chronicle of Western globalism, where I have bookmarked a section on the garment industry. I have a specific brand of pen I use and a specific kind of paper; without either I fall asleep writing. I identify a stream of ideas in my notes and label what needs to be typed up at home later. I tilt my Nicorette canister out onto my desk. Out spill two lozenges, and I pop both in my mouth, letting them sit beside my right bottom molars. I pull the book on economic consumption down from the carrel’s shelf and open it beside the chronicle. I flip through my notebook a bit, scanning my last few pages. I then notice Eve’s immersed gaze.
“Sorry,” she says, one of her legs hitched up on her chair so she spoke directly over her knee. “You have an interesting system.”
“Oh, yeah? It’s uh, just a notebook.”
“No, your whole research method seems pretty in-depth.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I took Beatriz’s Intro to History freshman year.”
“She’s great… Is that a Snackman?” Eve points to a sticker on the corner of my MacBook, below my arrow keys.
I return from a dining hall lunch with Paul and Yura, spent gossiping about members of our sexual network and the girl from class of 2018 who’s marrying a music professor, to find Eve leaving the carrel beside mine for a class. She holds my hand a little long as she says goodbye and I remember our kiss. I sit down and settle in, my last coffee from lunch already cold in its 8 ounce paper cup. Looking at my notes, I realize I barely made it through the section in that economics book. I close the globalism book and return it to my shelf, where I notice, printed on a round-edged Avery label on the next carrel’s shelf, Eve Greenberg - Global Politics M.S. “Ok, fine,” I murmur.
After my screening I sit and smoke outside the film building with Carter and Claire. She’s wearing a Springer hoodie over a boilersuit; I catch Carter gazing at her naked hip through the slit in its side when she reaches to pass me her lighter. “Miserable movie,” she says.
“Miserable,” I repeat, my voice a bark through my cig filter.
“I thought it was funny,” Carter says.
“You were at the screening?” Claire asks.
“Came in late,” he says.
Packed Thursday night at the bar. Underclassmen don't take classes on Friday. They also do not tip, so I leave 5 dollars for a vodka soda and a rum and coke. The Barge is styled after an East Village no-wave dive, down to its smoke-stained walls and unseemly linoleum floor. It boasts lots of beers, no kitchen, Wi-Fi in the afternoons and underage patrons.
Paul and Jimmy are talking about Chapo by the water dispenser. The morning Hilary lost, every girl was stumbling around the dining hall, crying and calling her parents. And then this kid down the hall from me took a year off because his family had to fight his deportation. Jorge works in the bike shop in town now and I run into him sometimes. There's a kid sorta in the way and I wait a second before I just brush past her with a sorry. "Asshole," she says, but the din of the bar nearly drowns her out so I know it doesn't matter.
I sit back in a booth, across from Marnie Hathard, who wears a hooded chore jacket, large wireframes and an anguished smile. She's in my garment seminar. We've been talking about mostly nothing. I delivered a tirade about clothing, about how fashion is marketing at its core, which is capitalism’s fourth or fifth worst development, and about how the KHole PDFs were not seen as overt mockeries of trend forecasting but misunderstood as explicit guides to it. She said something, or she nodded, I don’t remember. I referred to Gap Inc. executives and London high street creative directors and "self-starter" establishment-backed designers in Europe as "lizard-brained thieves." I was getting to the destructive and useless hiking thing going on, and how it's built on the unimpressed backs of inventive graffiti writers and those people who die backpacking across the country when she asked me for a drink.
I slide her the vodka soda and ask if she's seen Carter. I only approached her to bother him, knowing she'd be too nice to do anything but writhe in her seat every time I got up, but I’m starting to feel bad about it. Sometimes that's all you can get, when you want to hurt someone random and get away with it. Carter's on the other end of the bar, nursing some local brew with Sheila from the music conservatory and a girl I don’t know. I am ticked at him because he got last part in Bart's video. I do not mean to imply I had any chance of getting it; I have never been good at skateboarding. In high school, I actually had a camera before Bart did. I could only afford a Canon GL1 and a dinky fisheye, and he got a Century Optics MK1 for me, ostensibly. Once he rolled up to a session with the Sony VX, I let him have the lens back.
Outside, snowflakes flutter quietly to the ground. Bart smokes a cigarette, chatting with Zack Marino. We exchange greetings, and I ask if Bart's seen Eve, as I am supposed to meet her here. Zack sucks his teeth.
"What's that, man," I want to say, but instead, I say, "Just for a drink or two."
"She's around--"
Eve taps me on the shoulder. "Joy?"
“Hey.”
“Sorry for keeping you waiting. I got sucked into a like, news spiral on Al Jazeer’. Y’know, that stuff in Yemen-”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. I watch snow fleck her stiff hair, woven through a wool scarf and splaying out onto her parka.
Eve fidgets, leaning back-and-forth between her leg on the curb and the one in the street. “You wanted to get a drink?”
“Yeah, it’s a little packed in there-”
“We could go back to yours if you want.”
“Well, Tracy’s out of town…” This is not much of a change of plans. There’s less time spent getting our jackets stepped on. I do want a polite out, in case I come to my senses and just go home alone. Without a bar and a table, what is there to say? A thing I already said.
I lead the way into my empty apartment, turning on a lamp and running off into my bedroom to take my shoes and coat off. I reemerge and see a polite Eve, still in her parka, looking about the living room. She comments on some piece of houseware and I reply that it’s Tracy’s; this happens three times as she gets settled in. I grab an opened bottle of shit wine from the fridge and two glasses. There's a Pavement record on the turntable - New York girls hate Pavement - so I put it on and sit beside her on the couch.
“Oh, I love this record,” Eve says. “Wowee Zowee…”
“Yeah, it took some time," I say, feigning ignorance, "but it really grew on me.”
“I’d say it's their best, but no one ever agrees with me. There's a pop record in there.”
I stare at her. "That's what I've been saying. Spiral Stairs-"
"Don't get me started. Malkmus is, of course, a genius, but… well."
There is a running checklist in my head - something I probably put to text once or twice as a 15-year-old - that is just getting checked over and over as the night goes on. Eve loses me a bit, talking about a photographer she likes, or dance classes, or her Clinton Hill ex-boyfriend who somehow died serving in Gaza, but I’m nodding along. I talk about skating, bullshit about catching a kickflip, how I can’t reproduce that feeling with anything. The first time I got pants tailored. Her summer backpacking. A car accident I witnessed. Her uncle’s suicide. Seeing my dad cry over divorce papers. Falling into a campfire at summer camp when she was 10. She shows me the scar on her hip, unbuckling her pants and leaning in. I notice her pubic hair is wavy. Camping out for a sweatshirt. Selling her sailboat on Craigslist by herself. The book I’ve read 8 times. The chapbook she’s read 12.
“I’ve never seen anyone, seriously, for longer than a semester,” I say, confident and finally drunk.
Eve gasps. “3 months? But look at you.”
“That’s a red flag, right?”
She laughs. “Yes!”
“I never took you as a traditional, as traditional at all.”
“That’s just FuckHaus,” she says. “And guys here are shitheads.”
“Case in point,” I say, gesturing to myself.
We kiss and there’s nothing awry about it. I don’t want to leave, and I’m not worried that I’m gonna hurt her, or get hurt, or fuck just to fuck. When Eve leads me to bed, I follow wholeheartedly, and when she asks what I want and says what she wants, I am honest.