Since Facebook has amputated its text field, it continues here.

Continued

In time, the man of the house himself returned. Phillip Kim was a boy of the shorter variety. He had the blackest hair I’ve ever observed and, in time, I would piece together the fact that he was indeed Asian.

A stand-up chap, and overly optimistic, PKim was nevertheless long-winded. As I lay in bed that first night, waiting for sleep to seize me, he was going on and on about how he could only ever be attracted to Asian women and about why he figured this was so. (PKim prides himself an amateur psychologist. He was planning to make this field his major, but he has since reconsidered. It really is best for all involved that he directs his pursuits elsewhere.) As I was trying to find myself to sleep, I decided to end the conversation by dropping a bombshell. I informed him that I found to be attractive only grossly obese black women. He backed away and I went to bed.

The next day we all made our way to Palmer Field for some college introductory celebration called Maize Craze. Along the way, and near to the entrance to the field, we came across an array of tables set up to take spiritual surveys. I would later find out that this was an evangelical arm of the campus-centered New Life Church, but at the time I was convinced that I needed to fill out the survey to be admitted to the field. They were ingenious to set things up that way.

At the event, I sat, cross-legged, on the field with PKim, some other Asian fellow, and our neighbor from across the hall, a Spaniard who had resided in Madrid and, alternatively in the States, in Houston. This guy, Pablo, was the typical arrogant European. Self-superior, conceited, demanding, and brusque, he was altogether a real douche bag. PKim told him about my dating preferences from the previous night, giving me the first few hints that this small white lie about my pursuits with a largish black woman would have far-reaching repercussions. Maize Craze was forgettable; the one thing that I took away was a pair of free tickets for a game of golf at a local course, which had been raffled and which I had won. I don’t care much for the golf, however, so it was no great victory for me. I attempted to sell the tickets over the next several weeks. I was so eager to get rid of them that, as an incentive, I taped the tickets to the outside of my door along with the ad to buy them. They were so lame that no one even bothered to steal them.

On arriving back at East Quadrangle, my dormitory, I was intercepted on the sidewalk by two new strangers with spiritual surveys for another campus organization. Pleased with all the added attention, I filled one out. Within a couple of days, the same two men, Dan Trepod and Mark Wolfman, arrived at my dorm room to follow up on my interest. This marked the beginning of my association with Campus Crusade for Christ. Soon thereafter, I was a regular attendee of the Tuesday night bible studies and the Friday night organization-wide snooze-fests, which were emceed by Jeremy Bey and Mitch, two of my classmates from Elementary Turkish. A third classmate, Eric Johnson, played in the ever-awful CRU Band. I found myself in a bible study being led by three students—Mark Wolfman, Matt VanderLaan, and, whenever they couldn’t find the time, Ted Ball. Ted Ball is a man who is big on God and even bigger on irritating those around him. Plus, he has a tendency to wear sandals and waft his vicious foot odor in the direction of whoever’s ill-fated enough to sit beside him.

Soon, I was visited by the East Quad representative of the other organization, New Life Church. This was a Catholic after God’s own heart, if God is prone to going about all day quoting Chris Farley movies. This Joe Zmikly told me about his church’s bible study, called “Lifegroup,” and I began attending that on a weekly basis as well. It was revolutionary—a co-ed bible study, probably New Life’s first. The tentative reason for this was for Joe to train his girlfriend, Stacy, who was also in the group, to lead her own women’s Lifegroup. Whatever the cause, we were comprised of members Stacy, Kelly, Karen, whose post-college crises would always add some flavor, Joe, Austin, Tim, old man John Allen, and myself.

On 17 September, 2003, Joe and John Allen invited me to sit down with them to discuss my faith outside Pizza House, a nearby restaurant. This discussion marked an early milestone in my college career. Supported for the first time by other believers, certain of my long-hidden doubts were addressed, and my belief was strengthened and my desire to seek after God made ravenous.

In the secular realm, I decided to busy myself by taking up a new hobby. Because I like to be prepared for every eventuality, and because I hate sticky fingers, I began to stockpile paper napkins. Others would thereafter accuse me of “stealing” napkins, but this, to me, seems to be a feat impossible. Napkins, the world over, are openly displayed so that men and women might feel free take one (or one thousand). I won’t specify from where I “acquire” these napkins, as that, though unjustly, might lead to the cessation of certain of my dining privileges. I collect them from restaurants, too, valuing those with logos of the greatest worth. Someday soon, I’ll get around to apprising all of them according to make and condition. My napkins from Northwest Airlines, I think, are the most precious. I figure, since they can only be obtained by flying with that airline, that their value must be at least equal to that of the plane tickets. I therefore don’t display those napkins, lest they should be damaged or, worse still, inadvertently used. In general, I disallow everyone, including myself, from using any of my napkins. I must keep several thousand on hand at any time, and more still, for the inevitable day of spillage. When the day of major spillage occurs, there will be no telling how many I’ll need.

The Arrogant European, Pablo, would now frequent my room on a regular basis. He would mark his entrance each and every time with a veritable slap in the face. I’ll explain. I’m no fan of pennies. I resent them, the way that they smell and the way that that image of Lincoln seems to boast, “If not for me, the Union would be divided and the world divisible by five.” When I receive pennies as change, I hesitate to accept them, I refuse to keep them, and I decline to allow them into my home. Whenever I would return to my room, I’d scour my pockets and my wallet for any of the little buggers and, should I find any, throw them away in the hallway. Pablo, sensing my almost racist abhorrence of this denomination of currency, would upon arriving kick whatever lay in the hallway into my room, causing me, in my old age and with my osteo condition, to have to lean over to pry them off the hard floor and re-discard them. This scenario would recur, nightmarishly, day after day until I could formulate an appropriate solution. I arrived at the cure one afternoon as I visited the local TCF Bank and decided to exchange a dollar bill for two rolls of fifty pennies. That evening, Pablo received, with interest, an idea of what a bother it is to have to put up with that dead president’s crap. His mess was so acute, in fact, that he required the assistance of a broom from the janitor’s closet.

I could never get angry with Pablo, though. As impressionable and naïve as he was, he was just a lovably doe-faced douche bag. He would question me at length about my relationship with my largish, Afro-American women. For the sake of being consistent, I began to add layer upon layer of further absurdity to my lie. I was indeed, I told him, involved in a steady relationship with such a woman, named Yolanda, no less. She was a woman of a lower IQ that I knew from the slums of Long Island and who I’d spent several occasions tutoring in the areas of reading and writing. I henceforth Googled a search for “large black women,” turning up several pornography sites in the process. I knew Yolanda when I saw her, and I speedily printed a copy to keep for myself and to share with inquisitive friends. The image featured Yolanda striking a glamorous pose wherein she was beginning to peel off a skintight black dress from her hulking frame. They say that to wear black is to give the appearance of thinness, but this dress did Yolanda no favors. The picture was ideal; I wrote the following message, signed by Yolanda, on the reverse of the printout: “Jeffy, I miss you so much! I so depressed I’s lost 3 pounds since I’s seed you. No oter man eva makes me feel so butful. I will neva ferget those nites when you used to cudle up in the folds of my skin. I kept you SOOO warm. I miss you, Yolanda.” When I presented this to Pablo, he accepted it as truth without question. And why not? I told him that what we shared was love, that she really did have something to offer me, and not only in terms of sheer mass. Looking over the picture, in which Yolanda was barely visible beneath the thick reams of lard, I told him that the giant was in fact only thirteen years old. Nor did this revelation inspire in him any hint that I was offering him improvised fiction. Instead, he proceeded to convey to me his heartfelt disapproval that I maintain a physical relationship with someone underage, and he presumed to lecture me on the drawbacks of statutory rape. I had had enough. Over Fall Break, I decided to take action against Yolanda, to kill her. Using an antiquated version of Microsoft Works, I fashioned for my beautiful bride her very own death certificate, reading, “Congratulations! Yolanda Vega has died due to a pulmonary explosion resulting from a heightened level of cholesterol, severe obesity, and generally poor health.” It was signed and dated by Wilma Vega—Yolanda’s mother—and the coroner. When shown this, Pablo would surely realize his error in ever trusting a word I’d said. To his credit, he did not believe the certificate, which I hung on the outside of my door, to be legitimate, but he somehow did take from it that Yolanda had died and that I was being insensitive to her tragic death. This could have gone on forever, I realized, and so I then confessed. Suffice to say that I’ll never forget Yolanda, who I can still imagine, across the fourth wall, rotting in her grave. As huge as she was, I doubt the worms have yet to make a dent in consuming her hide.

At this point more at home, I began to desire to take for myself a sidekick, someone who would attend me in everything that I did and extol my better virtues. I considered recruiting either Phillip Kim or Pablo; considering their overseas origins, it seemed natural that they should fall behind an American frontman. Unfortunately, PKim could not order his priorities, focusing as he did on becoming a successful academic rather than my number two guy. Pablo was outright disqualified due to his late-night profligate lifestyle and because of his unfair advantage in height. Because I was at such a loss to nominate a candidate, it came as a shock when he made a bid for the position himself, even though I’d never before met him. I was with Pablo in the East Quadrangle dining hall one evening, mulling over the usual shoddy assortment of barely-edibles at the “World Harvest” cart, as though raw string beans and chopped carrots are supposed to signify some grand coalescence in cuisine across cultures, when I noticed something unusual about the baked potatoes. Certain of them were sprouting. Typically, when a potato begins to dispatch its shoots, it is an indication to discard it. Not so in the East Quad cafeteria, however. I admit that there was something alluring, something exotic about them, and I couldn’t resist feeling one up. Its tendrils seemed to perk as I ate it—I was transfixed to my plate, oblivious to Pablo’s mundane conversation, as I beheld something unique, wild, and all my own—essential attributes for my prospective sidekick. With steady hand, I excised the “meat,” leaving behind only the brown skin and protruding roots. Placing it delicately within my palm, I managed to smuggle it to freedom and the relative safety of my room, where I initiated the skin and first called it by its name: Lambeon, after a less feminine version of Pablo’s last name, Lambea. Against my expectations, Pablo would come to resent him, his own namesake, due to petty feelings of jealousy and inferiority. On his visits from across the hall, Pablo would seek to destroy small Lambeon; it entails a great tragedy that, fearing for his safety, and due also to the loss of one of his tendrils as he became brittle with age, I was forced to place Lambeon in a soap box and hide it from sight.

I found that, taking only fifteen credits, I had a surplus of free time on my hands. I wasted a lot of time—too much time—mulling over how bored I was. I would stare at the wall on occasion, letting brief memories and obscure thoughts flurry across the lens of my mind’s eye. On one occasion I recalled, out of the blue, how much I missed a certain brand of Wise potato chip that had gone out of production. Unwilling to pass over this thought like so many others, I instead wrote an e-message to the company to investigate whether it was being produced anywhere else in the country. It was not, unfortunately. The Crazy Calypso/Mambo Mania flavor has been eradicated from off the face of the earth. On the same note, about a month later I wrote to TGI Friday’s after sampling a bag of their Potato Skins Snack Chips. This time, I had a bone to grind. My message centered upon a solicitation for four other flavors from the same snack chips line, which was printed on the back of the bag. In the third solicitation from the top, it read, “If your ready for a real kick, try Friday’s Ultimate Jalapeño Fire Bites.” What should have read “you’re” perplexingly read “your” instead. I called Friday’s out to promptly recall the entire line in order to rectify the grammatical mistake. They responded back twice, always giving me the run-around.

Obviously, I didn’t expend too much effort academically. Classes were going well, at least until one professor accused me of cheating. Me! Cheating! And on a bonus assignment, of all things! This assault on my character wounded me severely, and I went into lunatic mode until everything could be resolved. The professor took the high road and accepted my word, so I cannot blame him, and in fact I respect him more for taking care of the mess and apologizing promptly.

As the days and weeks progressed, I came to feel somewhat crowded in the small parcel of space that I occupied. To compound this, certain of Phillip Kim’s habits, God bless him, started to wear me thin. This cheerful young Asian, such an inspiration to all his peers, would actually awake every morning cursing the day ahead. Every five minutes, in fact, between the blaring of his alarm clock and frequent cycles of snoozing. Most of his expletives were in English, but he couldn’t fool old Papa Jeff. I knew that the stress was getting to him, too. He missed home. Whenever he had the opportunity to return, however, such as for winter vacation, he would deny himself the company of his family, stating that he refused to go back to Korea until he “became a man.” I’m no racial scientist, so I couldn’t tell you how pubescent maturation differs in the Far East from here in the States, but my heart had to go out to a guy so determined as Phillip Kim. My only hope was that I might be spared the consequences of his indrawn turmoil. This was not to be, as Phillip Kim with haste began to Asiaticize our room. He obtained from home a large oriental rug, which he placed at the center of the room and forbade anyone from walking on. This led to some tension, since whenever I would enter the room I would be told to de-shoe. Now, I’m a shoe-wearing guy; I tend to wear shoes. PKim, according to some Korean tradition, I’m sure, was a foot-airing guy. If you’ve seen his feet, you might just want to argue with him to switch over, but he’s very adamant.

So aside from the central area of the room that I couldn’t traverse, there were some other, very minor, late-night irritations. On Pekes’s birthday, he called from amid his festivities to inform me that he would be throwing an after-hours party in our room. That was fine with me—I do so love the fun, after all. However, when he didn’t return, even after half past midnight, I decided that he must have spared me and gotten along with it somewhere else. I went to bed, only to hear my roommate making his way in through the door at one o’clock. There were some other voices with him, I could tell, from my niche beneath the bed sheets. I thought, “I’ll play possum. They’ll surely get the idea that it’s very late and go somewhere else.” PKim flicked on the lights and he, with two other guys, sat cross-legged (or so I imagined in my mind’s eye) and barefooted atop the carpet. They spoke in Korean while PKim opened a bag of chips and turned on his computer speakers for some low trance music. Soon, I began to hear more Asian voices, other voices, female voices. I heard bottle-tops hiss as they drank and, at one point, Pablo even stopped by to get down with it, or however the youth are phrasing it nowadays. Pablo only accepted PKim’s invitation when he was assured that there was alcohol. Before he could come in, though, a large black man from a floor below (or so I’ve heard him described) arrived, screaming for “us” to keep it down. Mind you, I was still sheathed below my comforter through all this, eyes closed, thinking, “Any minute. Any minute and they’ll all get the hint and leave.” Then the black man threatened to kill Phillip Kim. Actually, he said something like, “I’s a gonna kills you alls.” Things were escalating, but Phillip Kim, master of Kung-Fu, decided to stand up to him. The rest is a bit of a blur, however blurry the events could be for someone who already had his eyes closed. Housing Security was called, and so all of Phillip Kim’s friends rushed to pile the alcohol into my closet, which I thought considerate of them. One Asian, who shall forever remain faceless, spilled some all over one of my area rugs. At this point, as the situation was degenerating into a more ethnic version of an episode of the O.C., I had to sit up and watch. I feigned a yawn and a stretch as I watched and laughed. I expected some hard-ass, Gestapo officer to arrive and come down on ol’ PKim, but the residence hall sent Santa Claus instead. A pudgy and balding elderly officer made his way upstairs to our room. Searching for nothing, he was unable to find anything. He couldn’t locate the black man, who’d vanished, and he was oblivious to the idea that alcohol was present. He did give Phillip Kim a stern warning, though. He said, “Ah, well. Just try to keep it down and don’t be droppin’ any bowling balls up here.” He chuckled, pulled up on his belt, and left, apparently to dispense his burden to good little boys and girls the world over.

On a separate occasion, I awoke one morning to find that Phillip Kim had placed his dirty clothes from the day before on my bureau, something I thought curious, since he’d never done that before. I looked over to Phillip Kim, who was still sleeping, and found that he had two heads, that there were two of him. I stood back and scratched my own single head, still groggy from having just awoken, as my mind attempted to process this input. I thought back to my preconceptions of Asian biology, wondering if it was normal for a man to reduplicate at a certain age. Since I couldn’t recall any other recent examples of spontaneous human fission, I became disconcerted. As though sensing my agitation, Phillip Kim rose up and off-handedly explained to me that a friend of his had been locked out of his room the night before and was spending the night. He then proceeded to get back beneath the covers and snuggled beside his “friend,” who I still swear was a dead ringer for PKim himself, and he drifted off. I didn’t let this bother me thereafter, as I reasoned that it was natural in Asia to find up to a dozen people per bed.

Yet, as with all good things—or, in this case, all insufferably torturous things—an end was in sight. I refer to my living arrangements with Phillip Kim (and not, as one might hope, this current narrative, which will never end). During one afternoon, late in this, the first semester of my freshman year, Phillip Kim returned to the room from what could only have been a less than satisfying day for him. In his fury, he flung his Frisbee, which he’d gotten as some give-away on campus, I’m sure, into the wall, which ricocheted therefrom and then sliced a trajectory thru the air that brought it within centimeters of my face. If you know me, then you may know something of my bouts of misfortune with Frisbees over the years. I won’t focus on them here, as they are beyond the scope of this description, but it’s enough to say that I’ve gotten busted lips and broken bones on account of those harmless “toys.” Now faced with another near-Frisbee incident, and in my very own room, I lost it on poor PKim, railing him and unloading all of my pent-up agitations that had accrued since early September.

At around this same time, Pablo, across the hall, was suffering through even worse conflicts with his own roommate, which I’d love to examine here, but won’t, as the nature and feelings behind this conflict are best left between them. Unfortunately, though, he had reached the point at which he could not even talk to his roommate. The roommate, however, claiming some sort of disability, as I understand it, was able to switch out between semesters from the double into a single room on our side of the hall that had been vacated by its former resident, a senior who was graduating between the fall and winter terms. Pablo, fearing someone even more unpalatable moving in, invited me to make the swap across the hall and live with him instead. Accomplishing this transfer in residence, in which I would attempt to move to a location five feet from my current location, would entail a monumental effort that would carry Pablo and I through several bureaucratic channels and eventually upward through the complex hierarchy of University Housing. We first approached our resident advisor, Jeni. She didn’t know what the hell to do, so she asked someone, received no sufficient answer, and recommended that we consult the front desk at East Quad. So we spoke with Mandy Griebe, the mustached woman who was the “brains” behind the front desk. She deemed what we were trying to do to be much too complicated to fall within the range of tasks that she would be able to carry out with the powers bestowed upon her by virtue of her prestigious position as the mustached lady behind the front desk at East Quad. She made a few phone calls to some higher-up, but I can never be sure that there was ever anybody on the other side of the line or if Mandy was carrying on a conversation with one of the many personalized figments of her imagination, owing to the psychological factors sure to be at play within her mind due to her position as the mustached lady behind the front desk at East Quad. She was a great help in that she coined the term that we would henceforward apply to this era of our college careers, the period of the intricate and byzantine maneuverings of the so-called “Domino Theory” of room realignment. Helpless beyond this contribution, she recommended that we next approach Taryn. Up to this point, I had no clue what a “Taryn” was, but it seems that Taryn is the name of the East Quad Hall Director, whose office is conveniently located opposite the Strauss House mailboxes. I cannot recall what was said during our appointment with this Taryn character, but I’m assured that the attempt we made with her came to nothing, as she was entirely useless. I don’t think that she was even listening to us; I got the impression that she was just killing time before her next appointment, or before her lunch break. Out of other options, Pablo and I decided to meet this challenge at its source and visit the housing personnel that were concentrated at the Student Activities Building. There we found a delightful old woman who at once understood what we were trying to do and finalized the swap. When I would return to the university that January, I would be living with Pablo. As for Phillip Kim, the university did attempt to fill the vacancy in his room with someone else, some Frenchman who would transferring to Michigan mid-way through the school year; but when this young man e-mailed Phillip Kim beforehand, he asked PKim for advice on whether he should occupy the dorm room with him or find some other housing off-campus. PKim, not biased in the least, suggested that the Frenchman look elsewhere, and so from then on PKim occupied the double room, larger than most doubles, by his lonesome.

This brings me only to the second semester of my freshman year. Notable events for this period should be briefer, if only because I’ve exhausted myself after my account of the first term. Not brief, mind you. Just briefer.

The beginning of 2004 inspired a degree of enthusiasm more muted than it had been even a month before. Not a day after returning to campus, I had a near run-in with death. While out and about with Pablo at night, I came close to walking blindly into one of those utility pole support cables that run diagonally to the ground. Pablo saved my life a moment before I could be eviscerated up the middle. If only I had an inkling of the dreadful agonies that waited before me this semester, I might have dove into it grinning.

I had my first taste of sub-par classes, and it skeeved me. The Residential College, or the “college within a college” to which I’d earlier applied, dictated that I now register for a first-year seminar within the program. The program, however, offered only a short list of choices, each of them obscure and each more gut-wrenchingly absurd than the last. I was saddled with a class called Unteaching Racism. The less said the better, really. A lot of liberal moping, thick on the touchy-feely, and plenty of practice walking on eggshells. I myself have never been particularly concerned with racism, and this class, which was entirely normative, did little to loosen me up to the subject. In fact, in time I became entirely hostile to the premise of Unteaching Racism, and I began to pride myself on my intentional opposition to it. My papers would undergo frequent re-writes, as I was forced to PC-ify everything I wrote in order to pacify the professor, who insisted upon being called by her first name in order to color the illusion of the class’s openness. On one occasion, the class argued that the artwork displayed outside a local restaurant was offensive and warranted a campaign to boycott it, to be organized over e-mail. The cartoon characters, with their big lips and jungle attire, they said, were an example of the Jamaican Jerk-Pit reinforcing negative stereotypes. I visited the restaurant to see for myself. The black men depicted could have been Disney characters, they were so benign! I made it a point to eat there as often as possible. If I can honestly say I’ve taken one thing away from Unteaching Racism, it would be the assurance that I can never possibly make a racially insensitive comment again. If anyone ever accused me, I have a license to respond, “Me? Racist? I’ll have you know I’ve gone to school to put an end to hateful discrimination. I’m part of the solution!” For that extra arrow in my arsenal, I’ll forever be grateful. Otherwise, the bitter feelings that I harbor cannot easily be assuaged. My experience prompted me to put an end to my enrollment in the Residential College, effective following my second term.

When not grinding my teeth in class, I had closer insight into Pablo’s exotic way of living. Rooming with the immigrant, I became familiar with his Hispanic melodies, particularly his favorite song, “Quiero Verde,” or “I Want Green.” The Spanish are a very color-oriented people. They are also mutants, I discovered, when I saw Pablo barefooted. He suffers from a congenital defect by which his pinky toes are curled into a claw and raised higher than the other toes. This is the result of thorough inbreeding in the old country, I’m sure.

Another term meant another go in the East Quad cafeteria. Although I avoided the potatoes, I could scarce avoid another near-poisoning when I barely stopped myself from ingesting a bowl of white rice, inexplicably stained a bright yellow. I pocketed a clump of the rice to later examine in my room. Within a week, it solidified into a single mound that I could more easily handle without fear of it falling apart. When its consistency was optimized, I proceeded with my master plan to join the clump of rice with Lambeon in marriage, so intent was I to find Lambeon a suitable helpmate. The rice I then gave a proper name, dubbing it Doneet, as in, “Don’t eat the yellow rice.” I was heartbroken, after going to all this trouble, when Lambeon rejected poor Doneet. The two, I realized, were incompatible. While Lambeon possessed such a strong character, betrayed so much expression in his face and shone with so great a charm, at the end of the day Doneet was just a ball of rotting rice.

During the time in which my food items courted, Pablo initiated a long-term, and long-distanced, relationship with a girl he knew from high school back in Texas. Pablo claimed that this girl, Tiffany, was really something special, but I, never having met her, always considered her a little tiffy. He’d be on that new-fangled contraption of his, the com-pu-ter, writing to her through the wee hours of the morning, and you just knew that the entire conversation was being transmitted via that unpunctuated, fragmented blather that is indecipherable to all but a few illiterate retards. Although not even I could penetrate the meaning of that online drivel, these two youths could not veil the subject of their telephone conversations, try as they might to conceal the substance of their jabber with the use of their Hispano tongues and coded messages. My favorite of these was the metaphor of the board games. He would gab constantly about how they would play Scrabble the next time they met, as though I couldn’t surmise what this “Scrabble” they spoke of really was. Not wanting to dishearten them after all their efforts at subterfuge, I played along. I expressed my burning desire to partake in a game or two with them myself, reminding Pablo that Scrabble is not strictly a two-player game. I boasted about my familiarity with the game, as well as my expertise. I suggested we make a night out of it, maybe use one of the beds and really spread out so we could all have access to the board. I had to warn Pablo, though, about how I like to put the pieces in my mouth. Sometimes I can’t help myself; there’s something about the texture of them that I find irresistible. I also tried to work out the playing order, insisting that I had to go first. Lastly, I tried to get inside my opponent’s head in order to figure out the length of his average word. You know—just to see if I’d be able to measure up in the heat of it all.

Truth be told, my interactions with Pablo weren’t competitive in the least. Most of the time, everything was laid back. Why, this one time my Hispani Daddy invited over his good friend Dave along with two other fellows, one of them a Chinaman. The Chinaman was one of the most pompous students I’ve ever met at university. He sat in our room, a fat lump of flesh circled by an air of sophistication—but beyond his façade of education, with his obscure political references, was just another profligate fool. When the Chinaman approached the end of his visit, to be followed by a night on the town in a haze of illegal substances, he marked his departure with a beer-chugging contest with Pablo’s friend Dave. A stranger to alcohol, I could only stare in awe as the event proceeded in front of me, oblivious to the potential consequences. It was over remarkably quickly. The Chinaman won, but only technically. Within a couple of seconds after raising the empty beer can in victory, it became apparent that the drink sloshing about inside his hefty frame would never settle therein. His eyes glazed over, his cocky smile faded. His muscles tensed and his chest rose, and, really, there was no turning back. For me, the next minute progressed at a pace so sluggish that I felt like a paralytic on tranquilizers. The impeded flow of time backed up to a complete stop when the Chinaman looked up, his cheeks puffing to capacity as he tried to hold back the tide. I could see, painted in my mind, my ceiling, splashed with a fresh coat of the Chinaman’s half-digested dinner, raining slowly on our beds and belongings. But by what sort of miracle I can’t recount, he put his head down at the final moment, throwing his hands in front of his mouth even as the vomit penetrated the barricade of his lips. It was a feeble attempt to halt a force of sinful nature. Time then resumed but, when it did, the scene had changed. In the Chinaman’s hand was one one hundredth of the total volume of the projected contents of his stomach. On the floor, and splattered across my area rugs, the rest. After examining the sparse few curds he’d captured in his hand, he flung them down into the vast puddle at his feet. That smile recurred on his face, his part in this shameful procedure having been played to the hilt. Pablo sprung into action, although his equilibrium was off after having downed several beers. He nearly fell into the mess but, trying to play the host, he began to clean up while the Chinaman sat stationary. Kneeling down on the floor with his ass hanging out behind him, I had never seen him in a more shameful position. It was what occurred next, though, that threatened our accommodation unlike anything else. Pablo reached for the nearby napkin stockpile, which I, by my own vanity, had left so prominently displayed. Those prized Northwest napkins, which I had showcased on the tops of the piles, were the first to go, hundreds of dollars’ worth of napkins seeped in beer and bile. Pablo and I were on the outs for more than a week after that, but we eventually reconciled, and I began again to build up my reserves for the next day of spillage. The true villain, I realized, was the Chinaman, whose smug face I shall never forget.

Meanwhile Phillip Kim, always the entrepreneur, was revving up for an interview with who-knows-what company. Since he lives to over plan for these milestones in his life, he asked me, now just his neighbor, to prepare a few practice questions for him one evening. I insisted that if we were to do this right, we would need to go all the way. PKim needed to dress up in the suit he planned to wear for the real event, and he had to enter my room as if he would the office. That was an entertaining evening for me, as I went out of my way to give him a difficult time. I chastised him for sitting down without invitation, insisting that he sit on the floor for his faux pas. If this had been a real interview, he would have failed for boasting about holding an auction while in high school. Not yet acquainted with the subtleties of the English language, PKim instead gloated that he “held up an auction.” Unbeknownst to him, I recorded the entire dialogue, but unfortunately I have since lost the incriminating cassette tape via the post.

Part of the prestigious UROP research program, Pablo needed to throw together a presentation for display at some big hoopla event. Because PKim, who was also participating in the program, opted for an alternate route to giving a presentation, he conferred on me his poster board and construction paper so that I could put together my own super-sophisticated project, one which knocked Pablo’s out of the water and garnered much praise among the stuck-up, limp-wristed UROP crowd. I took home the first prize!

I continued to attend New Life Church alongside the local Catholic church, Saint Mary’s Parish. At New Life I knew primarily Joe Zmikly, and at Saint Mary’s I became familiar with Jim Kempa, who I had met through Campus Crusade for Christ. I continued with both the New Life Lifegroup and the CRU bible study. The Campus Crusade bible study became a bit rocky after the group was exiled from the double in which we had been meeting. On 9 February Jon, one of the two roommates whose room we were using, for some undisclosed reason was rubbed the wrong way and severed contact, citing comfort issues. His roommate, Adam, ceased coming shortly thereafter as well. I quickly became more comfortable without them, however that sounds, although meeting in Ted Ball’s cramped single became a nuisance thereafter. Ted was well underway grooming our new addition, Garret DeNolf, to be his left-hand toady for the foreseeable future. The other East Quad bible study, which ran opposite our own and was led by Sean Hilty, continued to meet in the spacious Green Lounge. Michale Ok, a shoeless southern hick under Sean, once invited me to accompany him to Ann Arbor Baptism Church. This was pleasant enough, although I was accosted as soon as I’d entered by one overeager churchgoer who at once demanded from me a confession of faith. I actually remember the subject of the sermon to this day, which is remarkable considering how few of them actually sink in for me. It was on 2 Samuel 12. I never returned to this church—it was too far away and required transportation—and when two student members arrived outside my dorm room one afternoon to follow up with me about my single visit, I did not answer. Not because I wanted to ditch them, really, but because I had farted up the room something fierce.

That about covers the second term. At about the beginning of April, smug Garret DeNolf asked me if I’d be willing to room with him for the next year, again in East Quad. Since Pablo had decided to live off campus with his Jew friends, I assented to the invitation, being actually sort of flattered, since I didn’t know Garret from a goose turd on the ground. This turned out to be a tremendous mistake on my part, yoking me to the most irritating individual in the entire Midwest after Ted Ball who, appropriately, was grooming Garret to eventually take his place. On the other hand, this closer association with my Christian influences, although in some respects too close for comfort, dictated the course of my life for each of the three years to follow. In this regard, there is now no regret.

I finished the term, experiencing a wave of relief after my last exam which hit me at ten times the magnitude of your most sweaty hot flash. I met Jim for one more lunch at the Jamaican Jerk Pit and left the campus with John Allen, who was storing away for me a portion of belongings at his subdivision residence. Then it was away to the airport, and off to tend the goat.