Joe College, Part 20
In college, you want more, I think.
People become extreme. Unfamiliar passions sweep them. They develop radical appetites for risk and endurance. I obviously include myself.
Glasses-wearing guys with fives on their AP Calc exams became keg-standers and film snobs and political radicals. They reimagined themselves as potential sex heroes when they heard the right Outkast single. People ate nothing but pizza or cold cereal. Recent virgins slept with half the men in a fraternity; former cheerleaders dealt pot out of a dorm room. Fallen hotties grew fat from beer and calzones, and newly ambitious porkhounds renovated their bodies to Brancusis. High school lacrosse jocks who never used to give a shit stayed up all night on Adderall, researching papers on Russian political theory or human rights abuses in Burma.
I knew a guy whose roommate, a classics major, spent his last two years of undergrad reading the Vulgate in the original Latin. He now coaches debate at a high school near Tampa.
Chris didn't tell me things.
I didn't know about his academic disaster until Michelle asked what I thought about his issues.
"He's probably embarrassed for you to know," she said.
"Do you think?"
"I thought that he told you." She wasn't embarrassed to spill a secret; more annoyed with Chris's concealments.
"Why would he be embarrassed to tell me?"
She ignored the question. "I told him to talk to you and that you might have some good advice, and he was just, `Yeah, yeah, yeah.'" She decently mimicked him. "Boy drama is different than girl drama. Boys never tell each other anything. Guys have that ego thing, where if someone thinks you're not smart in the right way or a good enough athlete, it's this huge insult. Girls always want to be comforted, but if you try to make guys feel better, they get pissed off. Your egos make you dumb."
"I guess," I said.
"It's been pretty much the same since the Iliad and the Old Testament," she said.
"Maybe," I said. She wasn't thinking about Achilles and Patroclus.
His grades cratered in the second semester of sophomore year. He'd spent hundreds of hours with his DVDs, and if he watched with textbooks and notes scattered around him, he rarely glanced their way.
And I didn't really care -- at least, not in a sense where I thought he was an idiot. Not in the sense that I would have scolded him like an obnoxious older brother. He'd been one of those people who approached classes dutifully, like a mildly unpleasant job that demanded just enough attention to complete. People like me and Michelle and Matt Canetti were obsessive. When I was in college, I had dreams -- good dreams -- about stuff that I read for class. I could study for eight hours and enjoy it. Other people, like Chris and Sam Frost, sat down and forced themselves to learn. Their subjects were more precise -- quantitative, scientific -- and maybe, as a result, less of a draw than Leaves of Grass or a 600-page paperback about the War of the Roses. Chris seemed to take satisfaction in doing well and occasionally throwing obscure knowledge at us, but I never mistook it as passion.
I don't remember the grades, but they were edge-of-the-curve bad, enough that he could no longer expect acceptance to a decent med school. Instead, he spoke vaguely about teaching high school.
"I didn't want to be one of those jerks freaking out about the MCAT," he said. "I don't want to take the MCAT. I probably didn't even want to be a doctor. It's like, you can't do something your whole life because it's the first thing you thought of when you were a college freshman and it was the only thing that you knew."
"Right. Of course. But it's real work. Doctors actually do things. It's not like being some douchebag consultant or lawyer."
"Yeah, but I don't get into, like, blood and vomit and disease," he said. "Anatomy, botany, yeah, but I don't enjoy seeing a bone poking through a guy's skin or sticking my finger up somebody's butt. Maybe taking care of, like, kids and families could be fun for awhile, but not all that fun, really. It's all gross in the end."
I wasn't going to argue with him. Like what: No Chris, you should be a doctor? He seemed unconcerned. Besides, what could I argue? His grades had mostly settled it.
His casual attitude baffled me. I think it made me jealous. If I bombed out after years of planning and expectation, I would have second-guessed and self-doubted for months, if not a decade or four. He came close to failing some prerequisites and moved on to new interests. He had a knack for not looking back.
Sometimes I wonder if he burned his GPA on purpose.
But I'd changed, too.
Katie came back to campus that fall with a digital SLR. The last two years of school, she snapped photos at every excuse.
In high school, when someone pulled out a camera, I showed my teeth, cleared of braces, my enamel wide and new. My eyes had looked big and happy. I'd been a photogenic kid. I took advantage of it.
By junior year of college, my look was perpetual skepticism. The smiles became closed-mouthed smirks, bordering on appeasement. Glares, squints, frowns.
Pre-Facebook, she downloaded her photos and send them in group e-mails. Seeing myself through her snapshots, I winced at my own, newly tight persona.
Snapshot: It was the first weekend back at school. Our slow, easy summer ended with a string of house parties that felt like a spilled Risk board. The long, rambling, funny conversations of Porch Club were replaced by shouting our conversations in living rooms against the near-endless looping of Hey Ya! and other tracks from the Outkast double album, which, at the time, seemed to portend the breakthrough of a duo that would release years of great albums and be ubiquitous through our adulthoods.
After going to the football game, I took a cold shower at home, but it was the kind of weather that, by night, your face was doomed to a sweaty shine that looks greasy when a camera flashes. I wore a short-sleeve navy blue button-down. Due to the mugginess, I undid the top three buttons, showing my neck tendons and a scattering of thin dark chest hairs.
Michelle sat in the middle, with Sam to her right. She had her arms around us. Sam and Michelle looked comfortably into the lens. But my smirk was pained and tight, one eyebrow raised, lower lip slightly pouty. As if I thought I had the spirit of a punk rocker or a beat poet or hell knows fuckwhat, and this photo was a moment to be endured, for the sake of sentimentalists.
Snapshot: A group of chicks with black shirts and cleavage had their arms around each other, smiling. They were Michelle's friends, and for that moment, they were all beer, boobs and teeth. Katie's flash was too bright. They were pretty girls, but the flash washed them out.
It was before photobombing became an art. I stood a few feet behind, alone. The top of my hair was cut off. I grimaced -- lines tight around my mouth and in my neck, slices from my lower teeth caught in the flash, eyes drawn big. I looked worse than those girls, for sure, but that's what made the photo: a judging Frankenstein monster with a red Solo cup.
Snapshot: The all-time classic. It was still September, I was drunker, and my shirt was buttoned one slot too low.
Chris and I sat on the front-porch couch. Opposite ends, no one between us. We both wore khaki shorts. The photo hints at the definition in our calves and shins. Chris extended his right arm along the back of the couch, like it was around an invisible friend. The photo shows the shading of his armpit sweat, and the gray T-shirt with our school's name on it. He smiled comfortably; his hair was extra blond from the summer's sun; he was lightly tanned. He looked sooooo hot, just like the drunk girls kept saying that fall.
I was tan, too, shirt unbuttoned halway to the naval, giving the appearance of a debauched Frenchman from the 1970s. A bottle of beer in one hand, a half-smoked cigarette in the other, my elbows were on my knees as I leaned forward, about to tell Katie, "Seriously? Another fucking picture?" But the shutter snapped before I could, so we were left with that photo of Chris smiling and relaxed, balanced by my tobacco and alcohol, with an expression that itched to insult the lens.
It's a great photo. Both of us look handsome, I think. The contrast in our postures and expressions, the symmetry of us on opposing ends of the couch, the prominence of our bare legs, and the invisible friend perched between us.
When I miss college, I pull up that photo, look at it, and feel better. I can't sleep afterward.
Chris and I had been apart for only two weeks that August. He went back to his parents in Michigan. Trevor was with his parents in Texas and I had the house, alone.
Chris and I talked maybe thirty times in those two weeks. Some were twenty-second calls when he asked me to pick a movie for him, only to ignore my advice.
I called when I was bored. The conversations broke down to mumbled observations.
"You still there?" he said.
"Yeah."
"Thought the signal dropped."
"Nah," I said, stretching. "I'm just, like, watching Seinfeld."
Calls like that could last two hours.
A couple of times I jerked off when we were on the phone. He didn't know. We never talked about anything sexual. The gently melted vowels brought him back. I got hard and took care of business in a couple of minutes.
"It sounds like you miss everybody," he said.
"Ha," I said, and let the response hang. He wasn't mocking. It was just an observation.
"Did you run today?" he said.
"No. Too hot here. You?"
"Yeah. Nine miles, around a lake."
"Sounds awesome."
"Wasn't bad."
"How was your time?"
"Like, nine minute miles?"
"Nice."
"I know," he said. "I'm getting pretty good."
"When I was at my peak in cross-country, some of my miles were less than six minutes, and it was super hilly."
"That's nothing. When I was running the other day, my miles were three minutes," he said. "I was running so fast that I caught a deer with my hands."
"Well done," I said. "I hope you didn't kill it."
"Naw," he said. "That'd be, like, cruel. I just told her she was pretty and then let her go."
"Sounds like Snow White."
"No. You're thinking about Bambi. Bambi's the one with deer."
"Right. I know that about Bambi," I said, "but Snow White charmed animals."
"Exactly. I'm Snow White. You're, like, the wicked queen."
I had this feeling of welling when he came back. Michelle returned that morning, an airport shuttle dropping her off with a massive store of luggage. At her direction, we started cleaning. "No offense, but it's disgusting what happens when guys live together," she said.
Chris called when they were fifteen minutes away.
When he stepped out of the car, he said without looking at our faces, "What's up guys," as a declarative. Michelle practically ran to him. It sort of touched me, how excited she was. She threw her arms around his chest and he leaned in to hug her. They squeezed tight. When their moment passed, I went in for a handshake, but Chris hugged me, too.
ba-THUMP, ba-THUMP: it was nothing, but my heart rushed up from the feel and warmth and slight scent of him.
I hugged his mom and she kissed my cheek. His dad smiled with his lips closed when he shook my hand and patted me on the back. Chris dropped his bags in his room, and then his parents took us to dinner. This briefly annoyed me, because I wanted just to sit on the porch with Chris and Michelle, but his parents were so sweet -- always so happy to see us -- and Chris seemed to love it when we were around his family. What did a couple of hours matter?
Over dinner, his mom said, "It's good to know that the two of you," pointing to me and Michelle, "are such special friends to Chris." Michelle and I had almost identical responses, I think. A kind of pleased-but-embarrassed avoidance. "It's nice for me to know that he has people like the two of you around to look out for him and be good influences on him."
"Mom!" Chris said, half-shouting. "Oh my God!"
"Relax, please," she said.
"Oh my God, Mom."
"I'm saying something nice," his mom said. She directed a thumb toward Chris. "He's so easily embarrassed. He takes after-" She pointed her thumb at her husband, who seemed to ignore the conversation, and rolled her eyes. "-but he's always talking about Joe and Michelle."
"Will you please stop it, Mom?" he said in a pleading whine.
"He's so shy about emotions," his mom said.
"Quit it!" he said.
"Oh, Pieces," Michelle said.
"Pieces, be calm," I said, and quickly changed the subject.
It's crazy that his mom's benign remark tangled me for days afterward.
I imagined -- slightly thrilled -- that she knew something about me and Chris. He would never have told her, but maybe she inferred. But then, I asked myself, why would she include Michelle? And then I freaked out because I wondered if Chris and Michelle might be hooking up. They were pretty close, and Chris had insisted that he wasn't gay. It didn't seem plausible, but maybe?
But then: Christ no. Michelle probably would have loved it if Chris had been interested, but there was no way he would have played into that, and if it had happened, it would have registered. Chris probably would have told me directly.
I kicked myself for thinking like a crazy person. No mother from the Midwest would drop broadly worded hints that bore on the sex life of her twenty-year-old son. I mean, Christ, Joe, don't be such a freaking tard, I mean, Jesus, you shouldn't be lying here in bed at two in the morning trying to reconstruct some mother's words to support an inference that she suspects her ultra-stoic son is gay for you. Get a grip, you pathetic spaz.
I never related to the intensity that Chris felt about his family. I recognized it in the abstract, the way that you respect a person's religion or sports fandom, but it's not something that I felt in myself.
I mean, I love my mom and dad, and sometimes, Evan still says stuff that seems to look for my approval in a way that breaks my heart. Rob is who he is, and maybe, someday, before I die, we'll make peace with that.
But I've never felt them in the heart in the way that Chris did. They're people in my life who I love, but my days haven't triumphed or collapsed because of them. Not since I was a little kid. When we were in college, Chris had pictures of nieces and nephews, ranging from infants to second graders, tacked over his desk. I couldn't see myself doing that. It seemed clingy.
Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I think it's a gift that my parents gave me. It's like, they gave me the independence to be my own person, and not to fear their judgment. There was never a time when I felt pressure from them -- not for grades, not on teams. My mom and dad have their own challenges, but to their credit, the consistent admonition that they've given me is that I should do whatever I think will make me happy. They didn't raise me with a religious tradition; my grandparents and my aunts and uncles were vague, friendly people, to be loved and, at worst, affectionately tolerated. With my mom and dad, I always knew they'd be there in some capacity. If I became a heroin dealer with AIDS, they wouldn't close the door.
None of this means that I was immune from my parents, obviously. They can kill me more than anybody. My mom can make a vague allusion about the cleanliness of my laundry, my driving skills or the potential that I drink, and I'll still go nuts on her. Or I'll be talking to my dad, and he'll get this faded look, like he's thinking of Dylan lyrics or some bullshit lawsuit, and I'll stop talking entirely, just to prove that he wasn't paying attention.
They hadn't visited school since they helped me move in. Most people I knew, their parents visited at least once a year, unless they came from the West Coast or had money issues, but even then. This was a small sore point and part of the reason I didn't go back to New York in August. I nevertheless felt annoyed and inconvenienced when they decided to come visit at the end of September.
"What's your family like?" Katie asked.
"They're, like, whatever."
"You're an idiot," she said. "You never talk about them. You're very closed."
"My mom is neurotic. My dad works too much," I said. "My middle brother Rob is a prick. My youngest brother likes video games too much."
"I bet your dad is intimidating," Katie said.
"Pffffff. Way less than Glen Riis. My mom gets kind of crazy, but when she does, I just say, something like, `Jesus, Mom, calm down,' and she usually does. But I can still tell that she's thinking crazy.
My mom is one of these people whose brain never settles down. She's always trying to check-mate in a conversation."
"Huh," Katie said. "That doesn't sound familiar. I could never imagine you acting that way."
"Your sarcasm is awesome and clever," I said. "You should do it so more, please."
"Basically, you're describing most families."
"Except for Rob," I said, and gave Katie a cleaned-up story of how and why I kicked his ass last year at Thanksgiving.
This made her pause. "Wow," she said. "Calling your friend a faggot was pretty bad, but he was probably just trying to get a reaction out of you."
"Oh, yeah. The motherfucker got his reaction," I said. "Andy's the best guy. Rob isn't even in the same category. He's a classic, spoiled, Westchester douchebag."
"It's kind of impressive that you stuck up for your friend like that," she said.
"If anyone talks shit about you, tell me," I said. "I'll kick their ass."
"Because you're such a tough guy," she said.
"I'm not kidding," I said.
"Neither am I," she lied. "Fortunately, as far as I know, nobody talks shit about me, so I probably won't require your services. "
It was a weekend in late September. The football team played its first conference game. My mom called me from the airport, and then when they were halfway to campus, and finally, when they were a few blocks away.
"I know that you're close!" I barked into the phone. "You don't need to keep giving me updates!"
They stopped by my house even before they checked into the hotel.
My parents took Evan out of school that day. I hadn't seen him for several months, and Jesus: he looked taller, skinnier, and had a raspberry patch of zits on his chin. His looked longer and more angled. When I'd been in his shoes, all of that shit had made me so self-conscious. I hated when people said how much I'd grown. I hid my reaction to his appearance. "What's up, man," I said, slapping his hand.
"Eh," he said. "Just mom being a spaz."
"You look so great," she said, lunging out of the car and hugging me. "Are you running again?"
I hugged her. "I've always been going running." I was exasperated. "You know that I always go running. Don't make it into a thing."
I'd forgotten what it was like to hug my mom. The perfume she'd worn as long as I can remember, the faint wool of the jacket, the shampoo. The scent made me feel like a little kid. It seemed cruel and unnecessary that I'd gone so long without seeing them. This whole time, I'd missed them, and didn't even realize it.
"Your directions were great," my dad said.
"We had GPS," Evan said.
"We didn't need it, though," my dad said.
I think that Evan rolled his eyes. Maybe he'd turn out to be as bad as me and Rob, after all.
It took an hour before my palms stopped sweating. I'd seen them all with Chris's parents, so it's not like I thought anyone would try to embarrass me, but you never know. The people you're most comfortable with are the ones who can make things fall apart without even trying. We were all intrigued by each other's parents, too. If one of theirs had been visiting, I wouldn't have insisted on meeting them out of politeness, but out of my genuine curiosity.
I hadn't told my parents much about them. It wasn't like with Chris, where his parents seemed to know our class schedules and family trees.
When my mom asked where they grew up or what they were studying, it caught them off guard.
Chris: I was afraid that he'd weird out and break into mumbling before slouching away. He stood stiffly with his shoulders at his side, his head slightly cocked during smalltalk about flights and classes, like he thought he'd have to duck.
"We tried to clean up a little," he said, when my mom commented on how good the place looked.
"Did Joe personally clean?" she said.
"Hell yes, I cleaned," I said.
"Living with women has civilized you," she said.
"Joe's a great person to live with," Chris said. He didn't read the banter with my mom. It was like he thought he needed to make sure that my mom didn't have the wrong impression, or like he'd practiced the compliment. "He's a really considerate and respectful guy."
"Awww, thanks dude," I said, slapping his shoulder. "You only say that because I have the Playstation." It was a lame line, but I had to say something to get him off the hook.
His compliment seemed to ease the nervous energy that my mom and I drew from each other. As soon as Chris said that, she shifted with the understanding that one of my friends wasn't a cynical smartass. Sometimes I forget that she spent all those years as a high school guidance counselor. She's no idiot about gauging people.
My dad, who had no nervous energy, liked him too, I could tell. My dad's easygoing, but he's a swift judge of character. He can spot a phony or tell when someone pushes too hard. When he thinks someone is full of shit, he pretends at sincere over-interest, amused by the character they're pretending to be, pushing them to expand further. For instance, he's always toyed with Sam, and Sam has no idea.
I hadn't thought about Chris getting along with my parents. My only thought had been each side not thinking that the other was weird. What I hadn't expected was the prospect of Chris disarming them, and that this sight would lead me to other thoughts.
"People in the Midwest are different," my mom said over dinner.
"I know," I said. "It's almost a cliche, but it's true."
"They even move differently," my dad said. "I don't just mean that they're not in a hurry. Don't you think their posture seems less defensive?"
"They're passive-aggressive here," I said. "It's not like New York. They can not like you, but they don't show it unless they're drunk."
"Where is Chris from, again?" my mom said.
"It's a suburb in Michigan."
"Detroit?" she said.
"No. Michelle's from Detroit. Chris is from, like, some town."
"They're not like your high school friends, are they?" my dad said.
"I don't know," I said. "What are you getting at?"
"Just thinking about Rick and Sanjay and those guys. When you guys got together, it was always very loud."
He was trying to be diplomatic about the high school guys. "I don't know. When it's just Sam and Trevor, the three of us get loud. Living with chicks probably keeps it calmer, and Chris kind of does his own thing. I like that you call them `loud.' But yeah, Rick and Sanjay are loud. Sam and Trevor are loud."
"Chris is very sincere," my mom said. "He looks like he could be an actor."
Evan rolled his eyes. The entire conversation bored him. We were in an Italian restaurant, a place where undergrads dressed up and brought dates and alumni showed up on football weekends dressed in finest sweatshirts. Throughout the conversation, Evan kept sighing dramatically, gently batting orecchiette with his fork.
"The game tomorrow's going to be awesome, Evan," I said.
"Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it," he said. I don't think he was being sarcastic, but his voice was so flat, I couldn't tell.
"You get kind of carried away by the atmosphere. It's more fun than going to an NFL game."
"That's cool," he said.
"He's tired from the flight," my mom said.
My brother Rob's absence was inconspicuous. Even if our relationship had been better, when I was sixteen, I didn't want to go on weekend trips with our parents, either. If we were a different kind of family, he would have stayed at the house, and I'd have a sixteen-year-old brother to take to house parties. He'd get to have a couple of beers. I'd keep an eye on him, but he'd get drunker than made me comfortable and unsuccessfully hit on hot girls. We'd walk home drunk. He'd talk about the hot girls and how awesome college seemed. We'd stop for slices on the way home while I tried to persuade him to go here and not a douche factory like Penn or Dartmouth.
But it was Rob. We would have been cursing and arguing within an hour. He barely would have said hello. As soon as he had the chance, he'd talk shit about my friends. He'd comment that Chris seemed slow and stupid, Michelle was an Asian nerd, Katie's voice was annoying even though she had a nice rack. His routine was predictable. I knew how those things went.
If anything, I was angry that he was allowed to stay home alone. He'd try to cement his social position with an awesome house party. They'd drink shitty beer, pass joints around and piss on tree trunks in the backyard. I don't know why this infuriated me, but it did, until Saturday morning, when my parents mentnioned that they'd sent Rob to Boston to spend the weekend with our aunt and uncle. That was punishment for something. I didn't ask what.
I walked them to their hotel, and then walked home. There was a house party a couple of doors down. A drunk girl on the sidewalk with a red Solo cup asked me if I wanted a beer. I said no thanks. She asked if I was sure. I said yeah.
In my own house, Chris and Michelle sat on opposite ends of the couch, reading for class. Chris wore flannel pants and my orange hoodie.
"Nice hoodie," I said.
"I'm cold," he said.
"Wow. Too cold to go out?"
"I don't want to drink tonight," Michelle said.
"I'm getting up early for the game tomorrow," Chris said.
"How was dinner?" Michelle asked.
"Your parents seemed nice," Chris said.
"Thank you," I said. "They wouldn't shut up about how people from the Midwest are nice."
"They weren't like I expected," Michelle said. "You made them sound very different. I thought that they'd be intense or intimidating."
"Like, pretentious New York people," Chris said.
"They seem more relaxed than you," Michelle said.
"Thanks," I said. I slammed my fist on the coffee table. "I'm relaxed as hell."
"No. You're, like, psycho boy," Chris said.
"Don't be mean," I said, leaning over and pulling the hood back from his hair.
Snapshot: Saturday morning, around 11 a.m. We're at Chris's parents' tailgate, in front of their SUV and a folding table lined with food. The sky is bright but overcast, which washes out some of the photo's contrast. Everyone is dressed in sweatshirts with the school's name on it, except for my dad, who sports an awkward-looking ballcap. From left to right, it's my dad, my mom, Evan, me, Chris, Glen Riis, Chris's older brother Peter, and Barbara Riis. Evan doesn't smile: he smirks painfully, the way that you do when you're thirteen and have zits on your chin, and someone commandeers you for a memento of that moment. Everyone else looks great, though, even me. I smile like a normal person, showing my teeth, looking at the lens. Chris wears his baseball cap backward, blond hair showing under the strap. He's smiling, but his face tilts slightly toward me, like he stopped addressing me when Katie broke out her camera and gave a direction. My mom holds a bagel, Chris's dad and his brother hold bottles of Coors, and Evan shows a little sulk. Between them the photo has just enough clutter to avoid looking like one of those contrived, unearned group shots, where everyone fakes it and pretends at something with just enough polish to get away with it.
Evan had a ticket with my parents, but we smuggled him into the students' section instead, crowding shoulder to shoulder in a mess of Axe and hidden flasks while the national anthem played. Formally, we had assigned seats, but once we were inside, nobody in the students' section paid attention. After the front third of the stadium, most of the students weren't die-hard fans. They paid attention during big plays. They sipped their hidden flasks while they talked to their friends. If you found yourself next to a large group of chicks, forget it, because they were probably in a sorority, didn't understand anything on the field, and risked ruining the game with ignorant, adamant commentary.
I mean, I fucking love the sport, but as soon as I got inside, I was constantly distracted, running into people I knew from the dorm, the paper or classes. If I didn't tune them out and focus on the field, it could be like an unwieldy cocktail party, with a stream of heys and what's ups interrupting the flow of smalltalk and gossip.
We were a few feet inside when an inauthentically blonde sophomore who wrote sports at the school paper poked my shoulder and said, "Hey, Joe."
"Hey, Becky," I said. Evan stood between us. I grabbed him by the shoulders and almost pushed him into her. "This is my brother Evan. He's hanging out for the weekend."
"Oh, awesome," Becky said. "You having a good time? Joe's the best."
That seemed hyperbolic, considering we knew each other mainly from parties and whatsups. I shook Evan's bony shoulders in her direction, like he was a large puppet. He wasn't saying anything. "He's very excited to be here," I said for him.
"I am excited," Evan said. "Stop shaking my shoulders like that. It's weird."
I shook his shoulders, swaying him from side to side. He didn't resist. Becky laughed.
"Do a dance," I said to Evan.
"You do a dance.,"
"We're going to find a seat and dance," I said to Becky. "We'll come back and dance with you later."
She said good-bye, and Evan loudly said to me, "God, you're weird."
"I'll stop shaking you now," I said, lifting my hands from his shoulders. "Don't get lost. We'll never find you."
"Dude, I'm going to watch with Chris and Katie," Evan said. They were directly in front of us. They hadn't spoken while I flung Evan in front of Becky.
"Yeah, man, you can watch with us," Katie said.
"For sure," Chris said. "Joe spends half the games talking to people about, like, gossip about editors and professors and whatever."
"Do you know everybody here?" Evan said to me.
"Nah. It's a big place, but a lot of people know a lot of people."
"Obviously," Evan said. "Stop trying to make me dance for people. It's childish."
"I won't do it again," I said. "You shouldn't be shy about dancing. You're a good little dancer."
"I never dance," Evan said.
"Stop it, Joe," Katie said to me. "Let's find space for kick-off and shut up."
It was the first conference game of the fall. The team was 4-0 after defeating a string of mid-major calamities. The opponent that day wasn't a traditional rival. It was the kind of program that reliably gets six or eight wins and goes to a decent bowl game every other year. We scored first, on a four-minute opening drive that seemed to consist of two-yard carries followed by a first down from screen or slant passes on third and six. This pattern seemed to repeat on every down, until on first and goal, the runningback ran it in from the eight. Our pass defense was a mess and they had a quarterback who would eventually start in the NFL, so by halftime, we were down 27-13.
At the end of the third quarter, down 34-20, the team facilitated those strings of miracles that happen in sports, the kind that make you feel majestic and blessed even though you're projecting empty passions into a collection of physically bizarre, quite-possibly-insane men who feel like proxies for everything you love. The other team was at the eleven and about to go up by three touchdowns when one of our linebackers broke through to sack the quarterback, who fumbled the ball with our team recovering on the 25. Our team scored on a three-minute pass-heavy drive: 34-27, with about 13 minutes left. We shut down their offense after they got a run-heavy first down: ten minutes left. That possession nevertheless ate a lot of clock. When our next drive ended with a 43-yard field goal, Chris cursed without restraint: "This is bullshit!" he screamed in my face, grabbing me by the neck of my shirt. I ducked my head and laughed. It was one of the only times I heard him swear unironically.
He apologized to my brother after the game. "How do you not go for it in that situation? They're going to go down field, score, and we'll be down by fucking 11. There's no way we'll convert. Watch. Just watch." And that's where it looked like it was heading, until their quarterback threw a pick from the forty to our free safety, who ran it to midfield. Five minutes left, down by four, with momentum and larynx and the smite of an arbitrary Lord raining fire on the other team. Every snap and every block seemed tectonic. With two minutes left, our 5' 10" halfback found a hole, spun off a linebacker, and stumbled into the endzone. Home: 37; Visitors: 34. Katie practically fell into my arms; I almost lost balance and knocked Evan over. The sweat of unknown hands struck mine. A fat girl in the row behind screamed in my ear and clutched my shoulder, and then, within seconds of making the extra point, Chris started repeating, in a voice like Raymond Babbitt, "We're going to lose. We're going to lose," and I was all, "Shut up, we're not going to lose," and Katie was like, "Stop it, Pieces!" but Chris eyed us nervously and repeated his prediction. It looked like he would be bitterly, horribly right. They returned the kick to the 35, and were near our twenty with 15 seconds left, based in large part on a pass interference call. They threw to the endzone twice, and the second attempt ate more clock than expected: we broke through the line and chased their QB, and when he couldn't find an open man, he threw it away. It came down to a field goal with three seconds left, which would send the game to overtime: "Oh, this is fantastic," Chris said. "They're going to make it, and now we're going to lose in overtime. We should have gone for it on fourth. This is sickening." I stood stoically with arms folded when the kick sailed left, on a low-breeze, cloudy afternoon, and the nervous tendons of a twenty-year-old kicker, the physics of a football careening end over end, and Krishna's love for me and virtue and all of the universe sent the ball a few feet outside the left post. I lost my voice and accidentally elbowed the side of Katie's head as a stranger fell on me and my hair follicles experienced a non-sexual orgasm.
This win over an unextraordinary team that meant little to our overall season, but it was like a new great awakening, even in the rows of sorority girls who didn't know the difference between a punt and an extra point. The team rushed to the students' section to celebrate with the front rows. Evan high-fived strangers. I fingered the sweat of my scalp and stared up at the scoreboard.
When we left for the concourse outside, I heard someone scream my last name. Sam sprinted toward me. I thought he was going to bear-hug me, but when he approached, he grabbed my head and delivered a forceful headbutt.
We bounced like billiard balls. My vision saw sparkles.
"Ow!" I screamed, leaning forward and clutching my head.
"Goddammit!" Sam said. "I'm so sorry!"
"Why did you do that?"
"I was excited!"
I puffed my chest and shook it off. "I was excited too," I yelled. My balance and vision weren't right yet. "You just gave me a concussion, you stupid, stupid bastard."
"How do you think I feel?" he said. "I hurt my fucking self."
He was with a bunch of soccer guys. In a big group, we headed toward Chris's parents tailgate, where I found my mom and dad drinking cans of domestic beer with Glen and Barbara Riis.
Chris's parents didn't linger long after games. They were packed up and on their way home by five. His mom kissed my cheek and told Sam to behave. She hugged my mom.
People sat on front porches, playing stereos and drinking cans of beer. Some of them had been going since 11 a.m. After a game like that, it would be a night where freshmen puked in bushes and everyone with ambition got laid.
Not me, though. I had dinner with my parents. When Katie's parents, we all went to big, long dinners at a French restaurant, even if there was other stuff to do. The game made it different. I hadn't seen Trevor or Michelle since before kickoff. Sam was jumping to head out to barbecues and house parties.
I was, too, but that wasn't an option. "If we go somewhere for dinner, do you guys want to come?" I said to Chris and Katie, after my parents went to the hotel.
They looked at each other. "Sure," Chris said.
"That'd be awesome," Katie said.
"You don't have to," I said. "I know there's a lot going on. I'm not going to be pissed or offended."
"It's early," Katie said. "We can still go out afterward."
And then we didn't even go anywhere that nice -- just to Charterhouse.
"I want to go someplace campusy," my dad had requested.
Charterhouse was old, smoky and dark. It's where I drank in public with Matt Canetti, back when he had a connection on the wait staff who wouldn't card me. The six of us were given a long table in the back. A Phish song blasted overhead as we walked in.
Other teams' games played on the square, pre-flatscreen sets mounted in corners. When they showed highlights from our game, the restaurant quieted slightly, interrupted by scattered applause. U2's cover of Patti Smith came on.
Katie charmed them over three large pizzas, and my parents liked Katie too much. When she said something inconspicuously clever or insightful, my mom glanced to see how I responded. She watched for signals that I liked Katie, because she knew I'd never tell her. My dad, who slowly drank bottles of Miller Lite, regarded her with apparent delight. Charterhouse played Piece of My Heart.
I should have bought her flowers afterward. She was liberal with compliments about me; she used the words "awesome" and "brilliant" once each, and both times, I interrupted to tell her to shut up. But it wasn't just me -- she was marketing the school, our housemates, herself, everything. This person who could be so acerbic and sharp was running a thorough marketing presentation. I was so exhausted from the day that I was happy to let her take charge. I kept one ear on her conversation but started focusing on the end the Virginia-Wake Forest Game. I remember hearing She Don't Use Jelly, but I'm not sure if that's accurate.
By the time we were done, my dad had finished four bottles of Miller Lite. Chris and Evan barely talked, both of them drinking Cokes and watching games. I only jumped in to shield myself if it sounded like conversation was steering toward anecdotes at my expense. It was now dark outside. The place was transitioning out of casual dinner toward long-term drinking. Across the aisle from us, a table of hipster-looking undergrads chainsmoked and drank pitchers.
The night air tasted clean.
"We should let you guys go," my dad said. "A lot of partying to do?"
"Meh," I said, stretching and looking over my shoulder, like I was confirming that I wasn't missing a party behind me. "Not really."
"We're exhausted," my mom said. "I want to go back to the hotel and put my feet up."
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Yes. Positive."
"We could go get ice cream or walk around for awhile," I said.
"I can't take any more food."
"Evan?" I said.
He made unsteady eye contact with me, shrugged, and said, "Sure."
"I'll hang out with Evan for awhile," I said. "I'll bring him back to the hotel when we're done."
"You'll keep him out of trouble?"
"I mean, yeah." I couldn't tell if she was joking.
"You're not getting him drunk," she said.
"Oh my God!" I shouted. Evan covered his face with his hands and mumbled, "Mom, stop it. I'm not going to drink."
"I just wanted to get it on the record."
"What record?" Evan said, appropriately incredulous.
"I'll make sure that they stay in line," Katie said.
"Yeah, we don't really drink," Chris said. Then he added, as if catching himself in a lie, "That much, really."
I made sure that my parents knew the way to the hotel and hugged them good night.
A few minutes later, we waited in line for ice cream. It was in the upper forties but we ate outside. We walked five minutes to the quad.
No one was around but a dude with a beard playing an acoustic guitar for a couple of his hippie friends. Chris babbled about our game and highlights that had been re-airing on ESPN.
"What do you want to do?" I asked Evan.
He shrugged.
"Want to go see a movie?" I said.
"Nah. I don't feel like a movie."
"We could walk around for awhile. The library's beautiful on the inside."
"We've been walking all day," Evan said.
"You're a bucket of joy," I said.
"I am," Evan said. "That game was awesome."
"Wasn't it?" Chris said.
"[Receiver redacted] is the man," Evan said.
"We can go back to the house and hang out. We don't have to do anything."
"Yeah, that'd be cool, I guess," Evan said.
We stopped at a party store for soda and junk food. Evan would stay up until two, and then sleep on the floor of my room.
Katie and Chris didn't go out that night. They hung out with me and my little brother. We watched Tennessee beat South Carolina 23-20 in overtime, all of us unified in our disdain for Lou Holtz. Chris and Evan chattered throughout. Chris was significantly smarter about football than Evan, but when Evan made observations that didn't add up, Chris didn't correct him the way that I would have. He'd nod and find some pebble of merit to play with. He taught him without making it obvious.
I mentioned walking Evan to the hotel when the game ended, but he obviously didn't want to leave, so I didn't push it. We considered watching TCU-Arizona, but instead went upstairs to play Vice City. Katie picked up one of my old New Yorkers and flipped through, pretending to be bored even though she wasn't.
I took a pillow from my bed and curled up on the floor, watching Chris and Evan run over pedestrians and get killed in five-star chases. None of it was a big deal, but I knew that Evan felt so cool about all of this. He'd been with me, Katie and Chris for twelve hours. When I'd been his age, I hated any hint that I was being patronized, or treated as less than an adult. Katie's tones were a little softer and all of us were sober, but Evan didn't know the difference. He got to watch a kick-ass football game, hang out with a hot girl, and play Vice City with his older brother's friend. Those weren't bad bragging rights when he went back to eighth grade on Monday.
"Should we call mom and dad and tell them I'm staying?"
"Nah," I said. "We'll just wake them up."
"Okay. What if they're pissed?"
"They'll yell at me, not you," I said. "Maybe I'll say that we took you to a frat party. Can you pretend that you're hung over in the morning?"
"I can try."
"Drink a lot of water. Tell them that you have a headache. Act like light hurts."
"Don't do that," Katie told us.
"Probably not," I said. "Never, ever drink, either. Seriously. It's terrible."
"I don't drink," Evan said.
"Don't do it when you're in high school, whatever your friends say."
"Shut up, Joe," he said. "You drank. You and Sanjay used to talk about it all the time."
"I think you misunderstood," I said.
Katie loaned him extra bedding. We threw the futon mattress on the floor.
Michelle, Sam and Trevor still weren't home. It was after 1:30. Some nights, people would come home with a crowd. We'd try to rouse anyone who was sleeping, and then play beer pong or quarters or scream stupidly until the sun came up.
I left them a note on the coffee table.
Chris brushed his teeth in our bathroom. I grabbed a washcloth and started scrubbing my face.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," he said, toothpaste in his mouth.
"Hey, it was really cool that you and Katie were so good to Evan today," I said.
He finished with his molars and spat into the sink. "It was fun. He's a funny kid."
"Yeah. He's a good guy. He's sincere. I was never that sincere."
"One of your flaws," Chris said. He was trying to be funny. He poured some Scope and swished it in his moth.
"Wait, though, sincerely," I said, rubbing facewash on my forehead, "it was really awesome. I appreciate it. And it was pretty great how nice your parents were to my mom and dad. I'll never hear the end of it. Everybody's parents, it's like, you can't really tell what they're like. It's like, there's all of this stuff happening here, and then my parents show up, and it feels like they've stepped through a portal. These parts of your life come up against each other, and in your mind, you think it's going to be this collision, but it really isn't."
I might as well have been drunk. It seemed like I was articulating a fundamental but surprising truth, but my words bled on each other.
"I guess I just mean," I said, "I think of everything here, and it seems completely separate from them, and then they come here, and not only is it not separate, but it's good to see them all, better than I expected, and then it's just like, I like everybody even more than I did before."
I was confusing even myself. Chris had spat out his mouthwash. He leaned against the wall, watching me in the mirror while I scrubbed my face. He was dressed for bed. The fading remains of a tanline were visible on the edges his T-shirt. I wanted to do something with him, but I wouldn't, not for a second, not with my brother upstairs, likely trying to sleep. I hadn't changed for bed yet, and was still in the jeans and gray hoodie that I'd been wearing since morning. A vein in the crook of his arm pressed out, long and visible. I wanted to touch it.
"I think I know what you mean," he said. "This, like, relief to think that everything kind of fits together, even if you thought it didn't."
"Exactly," I said. I finished rinsing my face. "Or something like that. I don't know. It was great, when we walked back after the game, seeing my parents sitting there drinking beers with your mom and dad. It wasn't something I thought about before."
He laughed nervously. We'd been trading brief eye contact in the mirror, but now he glanced away. "The something being what?" he said, his voice uncertain.
"It made me think about," I said, gazing up toward Chris, fingernails hitting my scalp, my eyebrows pushed so low that I felt them at my eyelashes. Chris pretended to be curious about what came next, but his body language gave it away. His shoulders pulled back. I knew the distant, rolling thunder when he breathed. Suddenly, the heartbeat in my throat felt like an illness. "Never mind," I said, and laughed the idea away.